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What's Really for Dinner?
The Truth About Commercial Pet Food
by Tina Perry
Cow brains. Sheep guts. Chicken heads. Road kill. Rancid
grain. These are a few of the so-called nutritionally balanced ingredients found
in the commercial pet food served to companion animals every day.
More than 95 percent of US companion animals derive their nutritional needs
from a single source: processed pet food. When people think of pet food, many
envision whole chickens, choice cuts of beef, fresh grains, and all the
nutrition that a dog or cat may ever need -- images that pet food manufacturers
promote in their advertisements. What these companies do not reveal is that
instead of whole chickens they have substituted chicken heads, feet, and
intestines. Those choice cuts of beef are really cow brains, tongues, esophagi,
fetal tissue dangerously high in hormones, and possibly diseased and even
cancerous meat. Those whole grains have had the starch removed for corn starch
powder and the oil extracted for corn oil, or they are hulls and other remnants
from the milling process. Grains used that are truly whole have usually been
deemed unfit for human consumption because of mold, contaminants, poor quality,
or poor handling practices. Pet food is one of the worlds most synthetic edible
products, containing virtually no whole ingredients.
Pet food manufacturers have become masters at inducing companion animals to
eat things cat and dogs would normally spurn. Pet food scientists have learned
that it's possible to take a mixture of inedible scraps, fortify it with
artificial vitamins and minerals, preserve it so that it can sit on the shelf
for more than a year, add dyes to make it attractive, and then extrude it into
whimsical shapes that appeal to the human consumer. For this, pet food companies
can expect to earn $9 billion in sales in 1996.
Scraps and Byproducts
For years, many care givers have tried to avoid feeding their companion animals
people food leftovers, having been warned by veterinarians about the heath
problems they can cause. Yet much scrap material from the human food industry is
ending up in dogs and cats dinner bowls. What the consumer purchases and what
the manufacturer advertises are often two entirely different products, and this
difference threatens the animals healthy, especially as they age. Learning to
read ingredient labels and taking the time to read them carefully is crucial to
making an educated choice when purchasing pet food. Ingredients are listed in
descending order of weight (heaviest first) under standards established by the
Center for Veterinary Medicine for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The
name of the product (in most states) is dictated by the regulations of the
American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). The trouble is, AAFCO
standards can lead to deceptive product names due to the weight and volume
variations between wet and dry ingredients. Also, the average consumer has no
idea what the definitions for the listed ingredients mean. Preservatives,
vitamins, minerals, flavorings, and cereal make up most of what the companion
animal eats.
It is not happenstance that four of the top five major pet food companies in
the United States are subsidiaries of major multinational food production
companies: Colgate Palmolive (which produces Hills Science Diet), Heinz, Nestle,
and Mars )see The Corporate Connection). From a business standpoint,
multi-national food companies owning pet food manufacturers is an ideal
relationship. The multinationals have captive market in which to dump their
waste products, and the pet food manufacturers have a direct source of bulk
materials. Both make a profit from selling scraps that originate from places far
worse than the dinner table. In his 1986 book Pet Allergies veterinarian Al
Plechner sums up what goes into companion animals food: Condemned parts and
animals rejected for human consumption are routinely rerouted for commercial pet
foods. A similar fate applies to so-called 4-D animals. These are food animals
picked up dead, or that are dying, diseased, or disabled, and do not meet
human-food qualifications. They are processed straightaway for companion animal
consumption. Little goes to waste. Says Plechner, Food processing refuse of all
sorts winds up in your animals dinner bowls. Moldy grains. Rancid foods. Meat
meal. The latter is ground-up slaughterhouse discards often containing
disease-ridden tissue and high levels of hormones and pesticides, the very
things that may have contributed to the death of the steer or hog. A decade
later, his words still apply. When cattle, swine, chickens, lambs, or other
animals meet their ends at a slaughterhouse, the choice cuts -- lean muscle
tissue and organs prized by humans -- are trimmed away from the carcass for
human consumption. Whatever remains of the carcass (bones, blood, pus,
intestines, ligaments, subcutaneous fat, hooves, horns, beaks, and any other
parts not normally consumed by humans) is, according to the pet food industry,
perfectly fit as a protein source for cat and dog food.
The Pet Food Institute, the trade association of pet food manufacturers,
acknowledges in its 1994 Fact Sheet the importance of using byproducts in pet
foods as additional income for processors and farmers. The purchase and use of
these ingredients by the pet food industry not only provides nutritional foods
for pets at reasonable costs, but provides an important source of income to
American farmers and processors of meat, poultry, and seafood products for human
consumption. Many of these remnants are indigestible and provide a questionable
source of nutrition. The amount of nutrition provided by meat byproducts, meals,
and digests varies from vat to vat of this animal protein soup. A vat filled
with chicken feet, beaks, and viscera is going to make available a lower amount
of protein than a vat of breast meat. James Morris and Quinton Rogers,
professors with Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of
California at Davis Veterinary School of Medicine, assert that there is
virtually no information on the bio-availability of nutrients for companion
animals in many of the common dietary ingredients used in pet foods. These
ingredients are generally byproducts of the meat, poultry and fishing
industries, with the potential for wide variation in nutrient composition.
Claims of nutritional adequacy of pet foods based on the current AAFCO nutrient
allowances (profiles) do not give assurances of nutritional adequacy and will
not until ingredients are analyzed and bioavailability values are incorporated.
Meat byproducts, the catch-all term of the pet food industry, is a misnomer
because these byproducts contain little if any meat. Byproducts contain little
if any meat. Byproduct are animal parts leftover after the meat has been
stripped from the bone. Chicken byproducts include heads, feet, entrails, lungs,
spleens, kidneys, brains, livers, stomachs, noses, blood, and intestines free of
their contents. What the pet food manufactures fail to mention is that most
byproducts, digests and meals are also filled with other substances, such as
cancerous tissue cut from the carcass, plastic foam packaging containing spoiled
meat from supermarkets, ear tags, spoiled slaughterhouse meat, road kill, and
pieces of downer animals.
Canned Cannibalism
Another source of meat that isn't mentioned on pet food labels is pet
byproducts, the bodies of dogs and cats. In 1990 the San Francisco Chronicle
reported that euthanized companion animals were found in pet foods. Although pet
food company executives and the National Renderers Association vehemently denied
the report, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the FDA confirmed
the story. The pets serve a viable purpose by providing foodstuff for the animal
feed chain, said Lea McGovern, chief of the FDA's animal feed safety branch.
Because of the sheer volume of animals rendered and the similarity in protein
content between poultry byproducts and processed dogs and cats, rendering plant
workers say it would be impossible for purchasers to know the exact contents of
what they buy. In fact, Sacramento Rendering cited by inspectors five times in
the past two years for product-labeling violations.
Grease and Grain
The most nutritious dry pet food is no better than the worst if an animals will
not eat it. Pet food scientists have discovered that spraying the kibble or
pellets with a combination of refined animal fat, lard, kitchen grease, and
other oils too rancid or deemed inedible for humans makes an otherwise bland or
distasteful product palatable. Animal fat is mainly packing house waste or
supermarket trimmings from the packaging of meats. Animals love the taste of
this sprayed fat, which also acts as a binding agent to which manufacturers may
add other flavor enhancers. The pungent odor wafting from an open bag of pet
food is created by this concoction. Restaurant grease has become a major
component of feed-grade animal fat over the last 15 years. Often held in
50-gallon drums for weeks or months in extreme temperatures, this grease is
usually kelp outside with no regard for its safety or further use. The rancid
grease is then picked up by fat blenders who mix the animal and vegetable fats
together, stabilize them with powerful antioxidants to prevent further spoilage,
and then sell the blended products to pet food companies. Rancid, heavily
preserved fats are extremely difficult to digest and can lead to a host of
animal health problems, including digestive upsets, diarrhea, gas, and bad
breath. Once considered a filler by the pet food industry, the amount of grain
products included in pet food has risen over the last decade as the American
population has focused its attention away from consuming beef and toward a
healthier diet of grains and vegetables. Commonly two of the top three pet
food ingredients are some form of grain products. For instance, Alpo's Beef
Flavored Dinner lists ground yellow corn, soybean meal, and poultry byproduct
meal as its top three ingredients. 9 Lives Crunchy Meals lists ground yellow
corn, corn gluten meal, and poultry byproduct meal as its top three ingredients.
Of the top four ingredients of Purina's O.N.E. Dog Formula -- chicken, ground
yellow corn, ground wheat, and corn gluten meal -- two are corn-based products
from the same source. This is an industry practice known as splitting. When
components of the same whole ingredient are listed separately (ground yellow
corn and corn gluten meal) it appears that there is less corn than chicken, even
when the whole ingredient may weigh more than the chicken. Soy is another common
ingredient in many pet foods. It is used by the manufacturers to boost the
claimed protein content and add bulk so that when animals eat a product
containing soy they will fell more sated. Tofu is suitable for humans, but most
forms of soybean do not agree with a dog or cat's digestive system. Like many
other pet food ingredients, soy is virtually unusable by an animal's body. Being
obligate carnivores, cats have little ability to digest any nutrients from soy.
The problem is worse for dogs because they lack the essential amino acid to
digest soy products. Soy has also been linked to bloat and gas in many dogs.
Additives and Processing
Pet food industry critics note that many of the ingredients (such as corn syrup
and corn gluten meal) used as humectants to prevent oxidation also bind water
molecules in such a way that the food actually sticks to the animal's colon and
may cause blockage. Blockage of the colon may cause an increased risk of cancer
of the colon or rectum. Two-thirds of the pet food manufactured in the United
States contains synthetic preservatives added by the manufacturer. Of the
remaining third, 90 percent includes ingredients already stabilized by synthetic
preservatives. Because most pet food contains large percentages of added fat, a
stabilizer is needed to maintain the quality of the food. Sodium nitrite, often
used as a coloring agent, fixative, and preservative, has the ability to combine
with natural stomach and food chemicals (secondary amends) to create
nitrosamines, powerful cancer-causing agents, according to A Consumer's
Dictionary of Food Additives.
Many pet foods advertised as preservative-free do not contain preservatives.
Almost all rendered meats have synthetic preservatives added as stabilizer, but
manufacturers aren't required to list preservatives they themselves haven't
added. Premixed vitamin additives can also contain preservatives. In the 1003
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, veterinarian Philip
Roudebush reported finding low concentrations of synthetic antioxidant
preservatives in all analyzed samples of products labeled as chemical free or
all-natural. Other types of additives depend on whether the pet food is
semi-moist, dry or canned. Because semi-moist food contains 25-50 percent water,
antimicrobial preservatives must be used. Propylene glycol was frequently used
in cat food until it was pulled in 1992 for causing a variety of health
problems. Processing greatly alters the nutritional value of the food
ingredients. Veterinarian R. L. Wysong states in Rationale for Animal Nutrition:
Processing is the wild card in nutritional value that is, by and large, simply
ignored. Heating, freezing, dehydrating, canning, extruding, pelleting, baking
and so forth, are so commonplace that they are simply thought of as synonymous
with food itself. Because the ingredients that pet food companies use are not
wholesome, and harsh manufacturing practices destroy what little nutritional
value the food may have had in the first place, the final product must be
fortified with vitamins and minerals.
Questionable Nutrition
How, then, can any pet food be guaranteed to be 100 percent complete or
nutritionally adequate? As long as it meets the AAFCO minimum standards, such a
guarantee can be on the label. Yet in 1994, feed tests conducted by the New York
State Agriculture Department showed 7 percent of all pet foods analyzed failed
chemical analyses for guaranteed nutrients. Other states report similar
findings, with failure of analyzed feed ranging from to 12 percent. Even if a
pet food meets AAFCO standards, certain nutritional requirements (for example,
lysine) can vary between species by as much as seven-fold. Although
manufacturers clam that millions of companion animals can thrive on a diet
consisting of nothing by commercial pet food, research and an increasing number
of veterinarians implicate processed pet food as a source of disease or as an
exacerbating agent for a number of degenerative diseases. For example, kidney
disease is on of the top three killers of companion animals. According to
Plechner, the extra protein and harsh ingredients of many pet foods place an
overload on the kidneys. Left untreated, the toxic buildup leads to vomiting,
loss of appetite, uremic poisoning, and death. Wysong adds, In the last few
years, large statistical studies have shown the link between the diet (of
processed foods) and a variety of degenerative diseases, including cancer, heart
disease, allergies, arthritis, obesity, dental disease, etc. After extensive
research, the Animal Protection Institute (API) published a Pet Food
Investigative Report to educate companion animal care givers about pet food
ingredients, ingredient definitions, labeling, and dietary ailments resulting
from processed commercial pet food, including the most commonly know brands.
Yet, whether such food is purchased at the supermarket, pet store, or from a
veterinarian, it makes little difference in terms of the quality -- only in the
cost. Since the report was published earlier this year, API has conducted more
research on holistic pet care and pet food alternatives, but still claims that
the vast majority of pet foods available on the market today provide less that
optimum nutrition for companion animals.
It is sad to think that the food provided by animal care givers to their
four-legged friends could be hazardous to the animals'; health and longevity.
Care givers should assume responsibility for providing as healthful a diet as
possible for the animals in the care. Consumers should be informed: speak with a
holistic practitioner or herbalist, or consult your veterinarian (but be aware
that a veterinarian's knowledge of nutrition may be limited to the two weeks of
nutrition he or she had veterinary school 20 years ago). Although the ideal
solution would be for companion animals to be fed only wholesome homemade and/or
vegetarian diets, this is not an optician for everyone -- the cost and time
commitment is sometimes prohibitive. By taking more moderate steps, however,
care givers can still greatly improve a companion animals' diet and quality of
life.
Tina Perry is an animal advocate with the Animal Protection Institute.
Reprinted from The Animals' Agenda
Nov/Dec 1996We are very happy to report that
HealthyPetNet's Life's Abundance and
Flint River Ranch contain NONE of the
things you have read about above, only human-grade, whole ingredients!!!
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