Do You Know What Your
Pet is Eating?
Many ingredients used
in popular commercial pet foods may be bad for pets. Commercial
pet food manufacturers often spend a lot of money advertising their food,
because their main concern is to sell the product. They
use flashy packaging, cute shapes and food coloring to make the product more
appealing to people, while the food may not be nutritionally complete for
dogs. Because of the potential for harmful ingredients
in pet foods, owners need to be aware of what their pets are eating.
Many pet food companies
claim their food is 100% complete and balanced while this is not a provable
or correct claim (Brennan and Eckroate 79). Pets
often eat the same food for most of their lives, which can lead to deficiencies
when the food they eat does not contain all the nutrients they need. In Foods Pets Die For, Martin explains that pets who are
fed the same low-quality food every day may be building up toxins in their
system; many toxins or harmful/poisonous substances have an accumulative effect
(57).
The Association of American Feed Control Officials
(AAFCO) was established to create standards for pet foods. While they have no powers of enforcement, almost all
commercial pet foods go by their guidelines for testing and labeling (Palika
8). Many pet food labels indicate they have passed
stringent tests either in the form of feeding trials or adherence to AAFCO
nutrient profiles to become AAFCO approved. However,
AAFCO tests are not necessarily an indication that foods provide adequate
nutrition and do not contain anything harmful.
Cusick, author of the Animal Advocate website, used adult maintenance dog
food as an example of their guidelines. In order
for adult maintenance dog food to pass the AAFCO feeding trials:
Once the food has been through the feeding
trial, the company can state on their label that animal feeding tests using
AAFCO procedures substantiate that their food provides complete and balanced
nutrition for all life stages. To pass the Nutrients
Profile guidelines, their food must meet the minimum requirements for nutrition
which AAFCO has created. These are the bare minimum
of nutrients on which a dog can survive. According
to the Pet Food Institute, if the food meets these requirements, they may
say that their food, “is formulated to meet the nutritional levels established
by the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profiles for all life stages” (qtd. in Pet
Food Report).
As can be seen from these guidelines, pet
foods may not be tested extensively enough. In scientific
trials, a large sample is usually required (100 subjects or more), especially
when testing something used by people. In this test,
only eight subjects are required. The length of
time is also low. The feeding trials only show that
the food can keep the dogs alive and "healthy" for six months, while many
dogs are fed the same food every day for most of their lives.
Some dog food ingredients
include toxins or drugs which may be harmful to a pet’s health. Many manufacturers use “meal” and “digest” in their food.
According to the AAFCO’s food ingredient definitions,
meat meal for example is, “rendered meal made from animal tissues, exclusive
of blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach or rumen contents
except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably during processing ” (Palika 57). These rendered products may come from roadkill, “4-D meats”
-a term used by the meat industry to indicate diseased, dying, dead, or disabled
animals (Brennan and Eckroate 85), or, in a few cases, even euthanized pets,
as Martin explains (Food Pets Die For 25). The following
is an example taken from the news through Reuters:
Recently, the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) has started allowing animal wastes to be used as
a feed ingredient. According to the FDA:
Animal wastes contain significant percentages
of protein, fiber, and essential minerals and have been deliberately incorporated
into animal diets for their nutrient properties for almost 40 years. Incorporation of this product into animal diets is a
viable alternative to land application or land fill.
Many people would be
shocked if they knew that this was where some of the meat in their pet's
food came from. But is it healthy, as the FDA has
stated? The answer seems often to be, no. These meats can contain steroids, antibiotics, or other
medications such as pentobarbital, which is used in euthanasia (FDA). According to the FDA,
"There appear to be associations between rendered or hydrolyzed ingredients
and the presence of pentobarbital in dog food. The
ingredients Meat and Bone Meal (MBM), Beef and Bone Meal (BBM), Animal Fat
(AF), and Animal Digest (AD) are rendered or hydrolyzed from animal sources
that could include euthanized animals."
The ingredients list
on a bag of dog or cat food may not be telling you everything which is in
the food. Pet food manufacturers are not required
to list substances which were added to the food’s ingredients before they
acquired them (Von Hapsburg). If they do contain
pentobarbital or other drugs which were given to the animals that produced
the meat before it’s purchased by the pet food company, they will not be
listed on the food label.
A recent study by the
FDA tested various commercial pet foods for the presence of pentobarbital.
Some of the foods tested did indeed contain this drug.
This study also tested the foods for the presence
of dog or cat DNA. No dog or cat DNA was found
in any of their food samples. The study concluded
that, “Presently, it is assumed that the pentobarbital residues are entering
pet foods from euthanized, rendered cattle or even horses.”
Veterinary drugs are
not the only substances that may be in the food but not listed. Meats that are sent to rendering plants are first denatured,
a process in which something inedible is added to ensure that the products
are not used in people foods, and then they are labeled as not being for
human consumption and sent to be rendered. According to Von Hapsburg:
Raw material from slaughterhouses is composed
of material unfit for human
consumption, this includes cancerous tumors,
offal, fecal matter, mammary
glands, feathers etc. The
raw material is then denatured to prevent it from
going back into the human food [chain]. Denaturing can be done with carbolic
acid, creosote, fuel oil, kerosene or citronella.
These denaturing ingredients
are obviously not considered edible and may be harmful. The
amounts in pet food are usually small, but as mentioned previously, their
negative effects on pets can be cumulative.
Other ingredients often
used in pet foods with possible cumulative effects include: sodium nitrite, a preservative with potentially
carcinogenic properties; ethoxyquin, a preservative also used as an insecticide,
which has been linked to spleen, stomach and liver cancer; and BHA and BHT,
two chemical preservatives also suspected of causing liver or kidney problems
and cancer (Anderson).
Foods that do not contain harmful drugs or preservatives may still
not be good for your pets. The AAFCO’s ingredients
definitions are often vague and varied; the name of an ingredient may cover
a variety of materials which can be given that label. For instance, according
to the AAFCO’s definitions, poultry by-product (an ingredient name often
used in pet foods) may contain ground and rendered parts from poultry including
feet, undeveloped eggs, intestines and necks, as well as small amounts of
feathers (Martin, Food Pets Die For 52). If this
ingredient is listed on a pet food label, it could be a mix of any of these
parts. Perhaps, in one bag of food, the poultry by-product
meal consists of all feet, or a mix of intestines and eggs. You do not know exactly what you are getting. Even worse are ingredients using the word “animal” or
“meat”, such as “animal digest” or “meat by-products.” According
to the AAFCO’s ingredients definitions, these are derived from slaughtered
mammals (Palika 57). What type of mammal is not specified,
so pet food buyers will not have any clues as to whether their pets are eating
beef, pork, chicken, or as Martin claims, even roadkill (Food Pets Die For
49). These pet foods may contain a different part
of the animal or a different species in every batch. These
vaguely defined ingredients also are low quality and are not highly digestible
forms of protein, meaning that pets cannot utilize much of the protein from
these ingredients (Pitcairn 10). Mindell gives a
good description of this:
For example, lots of foods contain protein,
but your dog’s ability to absorb and use the protein varies. Eggs are a good source of protein, because your dog’s body
will absorb and use all the protein in an egg. An
old leather shoe is a poor source of protein, because your dog’s body cannot
absorb the protein in an old leather shoe, and yet it could be legally
listed on the ingredient label as meat by-products and could be included
as a source of protein (9).
The best way to avoid many of the questionable
ingredients is to steer clear of foods containing less specific ingredient
terms, such as poultry, digest or by-products. To
find higher quality protein sources, look for foods which contain specific
terms such as chicken or chicken meal, beef, or turkey.
The definitions of these ingredients are much more specific; they
contain mainly the flesh of the animal.
Learning to read labels is very important
if you want a good food for your pet. Pet food companies sometimes are misleading
in their labeling. Because cats and dogs are primarily
carnivores, the food’s largest ingredient should be a type of meat. Pet food labels go in descending order by weight, meaning
that the first ingredient generally has the largest amount in the food. However, labeling can be misleading.
Pet food companies sometimes use a tactic
called splitting. Splitting is where two or more
ingredients are actually the same product. Martin
points out that splitting is usually used to mislead pet owners into thinking
that the food is mostly meat when, in fact, the food has more grain than
meat (Protect Your Pet 13). This is done by using
two or more forms of the same type of grain such as brewers rice and rice
flour. If put together, there could be more rice
than meat in the food, but if each of these ingredients alone weighs less
than the meat present in the food, the first few ingredients on the label
could read, for example: chicken meal, brewers rice, rice flour. Consumers
reading the ingredients list would assume that the food contains more meat
than rice when it is actually mostly rice.
Another reason why it is so important to read
the ingredients list is that the name or description on the front of the
label does not necessarily tell you what’s in the food.
For example, 9 Lives makes a canned food for
cats called Prime Grill with Beef. The first five ingredients are meat by-products,
water sufficient for processing, poultry by-products, fish and chicken.
Beef does not show up until the seventh ingredient.
People who read the product description on the front without looking at
or understanding the ingredients list may think that this is a good food
with beef as a main ingredient when it is not.
Choosing a good food for your pet should not
be done by watching the latest advertising. Advertisements
may be very misleading about what is in the food being advertised. As an example, Purina recently introduced a new dog food
called Beneful. The ads and packaging for this food show chunks of beef,
ears of corn, stalks of wheat and whole carrots and peas. As reported in the Whole Dog Journal,
[Beneful] actually contains ground corn, used
here as a dried grain and a lower-cost source of protein, and dried peas
and dried carrots. The latter, by the way, appear
17th and 18th on the list of ingredients, far below
sugar (10th), sorbitol (another sweetener, 11th on
the list), and even sorbic acid, a preservative that appears 15th
on the list of ingredients (Kerns 3).
As another example
Procter and Gamble, makers of Iams pet foods, recently became the defendant
in a lawsuit which claimed that its advertising “overstates the nutritional
value of its dog food” (Tucker).
Another resource many people turn to for help
in choosing a pet food is their veterinarian. People
assume that their veterinarian has had training or taken courses in animal
nutrition. In reality, veterinarians may not know
any more about nutrition than the average consumer (Kerns 4). Some vet schools only offer one or two courses in pet
nutrition, and the courses they do offer are mainly focused on nutritional
problems, not on feeding for health, as is the case at the University of
Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine (Smith).
Courses in animal nutrition that are offered
are often sponsored by Hill’s or other large pet food manufacturers. According to a Wall Street Journal article by reporter
Tara Parker-Pope, “Hill’s now funds a nutrition professorship in nearly half
of the nation’s veterinary schools. Hill’s employees
wrote a widely used textbook on animal nutrition that is distributed free
to students” (qtd. in Protect Your Pet 15). Martin
reveals that several large pet food manufacturers also give free pet food
to veterinary colleges and offer discounted food to veterinary students and
faculty members (Protect Your Pet 15). These factors
may make veterinarians more likely to recommend the pet foods owned by these
companies, whether or not these are the best foods for their patients. As
Kerns remarks,
When they’ve [veterinarians] been given free
Hill’s dog food in vet school, their veterinary nutrition textbooks have
been underwritten by Hill’s, and written by Hill’s researchers, is it any
wonder they have really good feelings about Hill’s products (4)?
Pet owners should choose their food carefully
and scrutinize the ingredients list. To help pet owners decide whether a
food is of good quality, here is an example of a food with questionable ingredients. The first six ingredients in Purina’s Nutritional Excellence
Formula for dogs are ground yellow corn, poultry by-product meal, corn gluten
meal, soybean meal, beef tallow preserved with mixed-tocopherols (source
of Vitamin E), and brewers rice. First of all, this
food has corn - not meat - as the first ingredient. As
stated earlier, corn is a low quality filler ingredient and should not
be a major part of a pet food. Second ingredient
is a by-product. Corn gluten meal, the third ingredient,
is the dried residue which is left after removing all useable parts of the
corn (Palika 58). As this food lists both ground
yellow corn and corn gluten meal in the first three ingredients, it is likely
to be mainly composed of corn. The next ingredient
list is soybean meal, which is a by-product from the making of soybean oil
(Palika 58). And finally there is brewers rice,
which Martin describes as “rice sections that have been discarded from the
human food manufacturing of wort or beer . . . . Little,
if any, nutritional value” (Food Pets Die For 64). Further
down on the ingredients list (16th ingredient) is animal digest,
one of the ambiguous ingredients which the FDA reported was associated with
the presence of penobarbital. And yet, even with
all these low quality and questionable ingredients, this food is labeled
“Nutritional Excellence Formula”.
For years, people have known that a healthy
diet will help them stay in good health and live longer.
For some reason however, many people don’t seem to think that this
may be true of pets as well. A healthy diet is the
basis of good health for pets as well as people. Your
pet may seem healthy, but the effects of a low quality diet, such as itching,
poor skin or coat, or reduced energy levels may be overlooked or may not
be attributed to their diet; effects may also not also show up or become
problematic until later in the animal’s life. Choosing
a better quality food may help improve a pet’s health, and may even reduce
the likelihood of cancer or other diseases as they get older.
Works Cited
Anderson, John. “The Poisons in Pet Food.”
Alternative Medicine May 1998. http://www.patmckay.com/Article_2.html.
Brennan, Mary L. and Norma Eckroate. The Natural
Dog. Penguin:
1994.
Brigola, Sandra. “Pet Food – Our Pets are
Dying for It.” 1997.
http://www.homestead.com/vonhapsburg/petfood.html.
Cusick, William D. “AAFCO's Required Testing”.
The Animal Advocate. 1996-2000. http://home.att.net/~wdcusick/04.html.
FDA. “Food and Drug Administration/Center
for Veterinary Medicine: Report on the Risk
From Pentobarbital
in Dog Food.” Federal Drug Administration,
FDA. “The Use of Recycled Animal Waste in
Animal Feed.” Federal Drug Administration.
Kerns, Nancy. “Choose the Best Dry Food”.
Whole Dog Journal Feb. 2002: 3-7.
Martin, Ann M. Food Pets Die For: Shocking
Facts About Pet Food. NewSage: Troutdale,
1997.
Martin, Ann M. Protect Your Pet. NewSage:
Troutdale, 2001.
Mindell, Earl. Earl Mindell’s Nutrition &
Health for Dogs. Prima: Rocklin, 1998.
Palika, Liz. The Consumer’s Guide to Dog Food.
Howell:
Pet Food Report. 2001
Pitcairn, Richard H. Natural Health for Dogs
& Cats. Rodale: Emmaus, 1995.
Tucker, Randy. “P&G's Iams Unit Faces
Lawsuit Over Nutrition.”
Mar. 2001.
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/03/07/fin_p_gs_iams_unit_faces.html.
Smith, Dr. Ronald D. UI-CVM Professional Curriculum.
http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/courses/.
White, Patrick. "
Reuters.
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/06/06052001/reu_petfood_43890.asp.