There’s a retail boom going on in North America. While consumer spending is down in many areas, savvy companies have learned that there is very little the doting owner can deny their pet. The result is a virtual explosion of products, toys and pet foods. In fact, one of the most profitable items on the shelf at your local grocer’s is not steak – it’s dog food.
Today’s better educated owners are growing increasingly picky about what they feed their pet, and manufacturers have been quick to respond with a wide range of foods geared towards this market. Phrases such as “balanced”, “complete” and “all natural” clutter the labels of cans that a few short years ago were more likely to say “Tasty” – or the old stand by “Dogs Love It”.
But how much more do we really know about what we’re feeding our dogs? The language employed on labels is less than clear – and the reasons for this may be more sinister than you think. Most of the major dog food companies are divisions of giant food conglomerates – conglomerates that produce tons of offal and by products from the manufacture of human foods every day. Using this material that would otherwise be garbage may be good business sense, but is it good for your pet?
In the last few years, articles have quietly appeared that illustrate a more disturbing aspect of these cost cutting measures. They paint a picture of a billion dollar industry that is almost entirely self policing, and willing to go to almost any lengths to increase bottom line profits.
The Language of Labels
Learning to decipher labels is a good beginning for those of us who wish to discover just what exactly we are feeding our pets. Any dog food that lists “Meat Meal”, “Bone Meal” or “Meat By Products” might in fact have been made from suspect sources. The generic term “Meat” allows the pet food companies to use any animal source as an ingredient, as opposed to more specific terms that clearly state the animal source – ie; “Chicken Meal” or “Beef By Products” . Even the foods that do state the meat source do not spell out for you that these meat sources could still fall under the 4D rule – that is, animals that were rejected as being unfit for human consumption. The reasons for rejection are many, but can include pest infestation, disease, cancerous tumours, mould, infection and a host of other highly unsavoury conditions. In the wild, most dogs will naturally shy away from eating contaminated meat, which perhaps explains the dizzying array of flavour and scent additives most commercial foods contain.
The very labels that are supposed to let us know just what is in the food we feed are open to an amazing amount of artistic licence, thanks to AAFCO’s regulations. A consumer who buys a food named “Johnny’s Dog Delite with Lamb and Rice” may very well assume that “Lamb and Rice” are the primary ingredients of this food – after all, it seems to clearly say just that on the label. In actuality, the addition of “With” to the label means the manufacturers are only required to include lamb and rice as 3% of the total food ingredients. If this food was labelled “Johnny’s Lamb and Rice Dog Food”, AAFCO would require the Lamb and Rice combined to comprise 95% of the total ingredients (excluding water used for processing) – a very big difference for such a small word.
The current trend towards wide spread use of Lamb and Rice in so many foods has caused concern among some canine dermatologists. “It’s not meant to be eaten by the average dog” states Dr. Maxwell, DVM. “It was meant to be introduced as an alternative protein, but if dogs are eating it every day it is now worthless to us for use as an alternative food. Owners of allergic pets will have to go to exotic protein/carbohydrate combinations like Ostrich and Millet, or Duck and Potato. It’s expensive and unnecessary. Leave the lamb and rice alone unless your pet has been diagnosed with food allergies.”
Old time breeders comment on the number of food allergies they see in dogs today – conditions that were almost unheard of in the days when dogs ate mainly human food with a little puppy biscuit or cereal mixed in.
Trash to Cash – Feathers As Pet Food Ingredients
Feather Meal, or “FM” as it is referred to in the industry, has long been used as a fertilizer. It has a high nitrogen content, and is also high in protein, but it is indigestible unless it is highly processed. Published studies during the 1980’s determined Feather Meal to be of “Low Nutritional Value” as a feed ingredient.
Beginning as early as 2000, there were rumblings within the pet food industry about a great new ingredient that was lowering costs for pet food manufacturers who used chicken and poultry meals as the basis for their foods. A German manufacturer, Goldmehl, had patented a revolutionary new method of Feather Meal processing for the pet food industry. They promised that it increase “feces scoring” in feeding trials. Feces scoring refers to the stool quality of dogs fed a diet based on a specific feed ingredient. In the case of feather meal, inclusion of more than 9% FM by dry weight resulted in dogs with a feces score of “1” – industry shorthand for explosive, watery diarrhea. Goldmehl’s patented Feather Meal would allow manufacturers to include up to 14% Feather Meal, with ‘acceptable’ feces scores.
The use of feathers as a pet food ingredient remained an underground rumbling until 2013, when Keith Levy, the President of Royal Canin USA, admitted in an interview with Forbes Magazine that Royal Canin had spent ten years developing a food that used feather meal as its primary protein source.
We have a team in France that is traveling the world to find ingredients. In this case it’s feather meal. It’s not only nutritious but can also be made very palatable to dogs. Feathers are broken down to an amino acid level and don’t have much of a taste. Then we add palatizers for taste. In this case, we have to be very careful not to provoke an allergic reaction.
Levy later in the interview mentioned that Royal Canin also uses hydrolized soy protein as a pet food ingredient, and that Royal Canin is “currently researching worm meal as a potential protein source for some of our foods in China”. Levy illustrated the best example of the Pet Food industry’s theory of ‘garbage in, pet food out’ when he said –
By using alternative sources of protein, we’re using something that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
Some ingredients, however, end up in landfills (or in your garden, as fertilizer) because they simply shouldn’t be used as a food ingredient, no matter how ‘cost effective’ they are. Feather Meal is primarily composed of insoluble keratin with high cystine content. Dogs suffering from a genetic condition called Cystinuria lack the ability to process cystine via the kidneys. Over time, cystine becomes concentrated in the urine, which leads to the formation of crystals – commonly referred to as kidney stones.
Owners of dogs afflicted with cystinuria, or of breeds prone to this condition or any other kidney related diseases, are advised to avoid foods containing feather meal. This means you’ll need to watch the labels for ingredients such as feather meal, poultry or chicken digest, and perhaps even poultry or chicken by products (I’m still awaiting confirmation from AAFCO on whether or not FM is now an allowable component in these last two ingredients).
The Grisly End
It’s the worst moment in every pet owner’s life – that final, painful trip to the vet’s with your treasured companion. You make the difficult decision to let your vet dispose of your beloved pet’s remains, confident that he’ll ensure the disposal is handled in a sensitive matter. In actuality, many vet clinics now use a pick up service to collect the bodies of euthanized animals, and what can happen to these pets from the time they are picked up is nothing short of shocking.
“Dogs and cats euthanized at clinics, pounds and shelters are sold to rendering plants, rendered with other material and sold to the pet food industry. One small rendering plant in Quebec was rendering 10 tonnes (11 tons) of dogs and cats per week from Ontario. The Ministry of Agriculture in Quebec, where a number of these plants are located, advised me that “The fur is not removed from dogs and cats.” and that “Dead animals are cooked together with viscera, bones and fats in 115 C (236 F) for twenty minutes.” One large pet food company in the U.S., with extensive research facilities, used rendered dogs and cats in their food for years and when the information came to light “claimed no knowledge of it.”
– Ann Martin, Natural Pet Magazine
Difficult as it may be to believe, millions of these dead American dogs and cats are processed each year at plants across North America. Eileen Layne of the California Veterinary Medical Association states “When you read pet-food labels and it says meat meal or bone meal, that’s what it is – cooked and converted animals, including dogs and cats.”
You don’t have to take our word for this – in this video, you can hear the (then) President of AAFCO (the American Association of Feed Control Officials, the governing body for pet food regulation, alongside the FDA), admitting on camera that rendering pets are included in some pet foods.
Road kill, slaughter house rejects, animals that die on their way to meat packing plants – all are acceptable ingredients for pet food under the “4D” rule – diseased, disabled, dead and dying. Steroids, growth hormones and chemicals used to treat cattle for infestations – including insecticide patches – again end up mixed into the final product. Meat from grocery stores past its final due date is also added to the mix, as are the Styrofoam trays and plastic wrap they were packed in.
Chemical Cocktail
The addition of euthanized pets goes beyond morally repugnant – it also introduces a host of chemicals not listed on pet food labels. At the rendering plant, time cannot be spared to remove even the green plastic bags the pets came wrapped in, let alone the insecticide laden flea and tick collars they were wearing. Even the very chemicals used to put these pets to death also find their way into the final product.
“Facts of Sodium Pentobarbital in Rendered Products”, a University of Minnesota research paper, stated that sodium pentobarbital, the barbiturate which is most commonly used to euthanize small animals,”survived rendering without undergoing degradation.” When ingested, sodium pentobarbital has been shown to cause liver and kidney damage and renal failure. The pet food companies claim these chemicals are found in such low doses as to be harmless, but make no mention of what the cumulative effects of years of ingesting them may be.
Before the meat even arrived at the rendering plants, it has already been saturated with chemicals. To comply with government regulations, all meat rejected by slaughter houses must be “denatured” – a procedure designed to make it unpalatable to humans, thus ensuring it cannot be resold as human grade meat.
In Canada, the chemical used to “denature” is Birkolene b. In Natural Pet Magazine, Ann Martin writes “According to the Department of Agriculture, Animal Plant and Health, the composition of this chemical cannot be disclosed.” In the US, there are a variety of other methods that can be used:
“In my time as a veterinary meat inspector, we denatured with carbolic acid (phenol, a potentially corrosive disinfectant) and/or creosote (used to preserve wood or as a disinfectant). Phenol is derived from the distillation of coal tar, creosote from the distillation of wood. Both substances are very toxic. Creosote was used for many years as a preservative for wood power poles. Its effect on the environment proved to be so negative that it is no longer used for that purpose. According to federal meat inspection regulations, fuel oil, kerosene, crude carbolic acid, and citronella (an insect repellent made from lemon grass) are the approved denaturing materials.”
Dr Wendell Belfield, DVM, former USDA Vet, “Let’s Live” Magazine
The chemical cocktail does not end there, either. To prevent rancidity, a fat stabiliser is added to the finished product. Dr. Belfield writes “The common chemicals used are BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytolulene), both known to cause liver and kidney dysfunction. Some European countries prohibit the use and importation of these preservatives. Another fat stabiliser often used is Ethoxyquin, suspected of being a cancer-causing agent.
Most vets agree that food allergies and toxic conditions are on the rise in modern day pets. When asked, many blame such possible causes as “environmental pollution” and “the stress of living in cities”. It’s an unfortunate fact that at many North American Veterinary schools, pet nutrition is touched on only briefly, usually during lectures that are presented by the major pet food companies. In a lecture to the New Zealand School of Veterinary Medicine, Tom Lonsdale, DVM, said “The problem is in the main unrecognised and undefined by the veterinary profession. Veterinarians gain legitimacy and privileges as guardians of the public welfare in respect to animal health. The profession has failed badly in its duties.” Little wonder that so many vets remain painfully unaware of the possible toxins our pets ingest every day, not from their environment, but from the very food we shop so diligently for.
Seeking Alternatives
So what is the conscientious pet owner to do? Long regarded as setting the standard for natural pet care, the book Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats sets out a variety of raw or home cooked diet recipes for healthy pets. Emphasising fresh ingredients, raw meats, and balanced supplementation, Dr. Pitcairn’s book addresses the nutritional needs of everything from pregnant dogs to vegetarian cats. For added convenience, Urban Wolf and Sojos offer holistic pet food mixes that include vitamins and natural source minerals – everything needed to create a balanced home cooked diet. The mixes need only to be combined with fresh meat and a little warm water, and you have a complete and balanced alternative to commercial pet food. You have the option of feeding the final food raw, as is suggested, or lightly cooking it.
With recent E Coli outbreaks in the news, as well as articles outlining growing concern about chemical laden meats and produce and genetically modified foods, a growing segment of the population is turning to organic food sources both for themselves and their pets. Home cooking allows those who prefer to feed only organic ingredients to control what they include in their dog’s diet. You can choose to include only organically raised, hormone free meats, as well as pesticide free vegetables. This choice has fascinating repercussions for dog breeders, in particular. Studies out of Germany were done to analyze the benefits of organic foods versus those of mass produced, factory farmed foods. Control animals fed on strictly organic diets were found to have significantly higher fertility rates, lower birth mortality rates and over all higher litter sizes than control animals fed on standard, non organically raised foods.
For those who do not have time to feed raw, or simply prefer a commercially prepared food, an answer may lie in the growing number of all natural pet food companies that are emerging. Many of these manufacturers are adamant about their commitment to using only “Human Grade” ingredients – that is, food sources that have been certified as safe enough to be eaten by humans. While premium foods carry a price tag higher than your average supermarket brand, they more than offset this by requiring pets to be fed a reduced volume of food compared to foods made from nutritionally worthless sources.
As pet owners, it is up to us to learn just what it is we are feeding our pets, and to decide what we can and cannot accept as ingredients. Make inquiries – most manufacturers print their customer service 1-800 number on the side of their bag. Ask them what they put in their food – and if you don’t like the answer, tell them so. Insist on food made from quality ingredients, sold in packages that are clearly labelled, and tell them you will only buy from companies willing to offer this. Those of us who breed can carry particular clout, which we can exercise in part by recommending a food we trust to buyers who would otherwise be swayed by advertising. The fact that so many breeders are sought out to appear in dog food ads illustrates how much our opinions matter to the major companies – when you call them, tell them if you are a breeder. Together, the pet owning public can flex it’s financial muscle to a degree that manufacturers will have a difficult time ignoring, and together we may be able to ensure no other well loved family pet finds its way into a food can.
Additional Resources:
- Dog Foods We Recommend
- Raw Feeding Articles
- Dog Food Recall Alerts @ Truth About Pet Food (outside link)