Every now and then I will take a random bag of pet food off of a store
shelf to just glance at the ingredients and see what other pet food companies
are up to. A sample ingredient list often goes as follows: Ground yellow
corn, corn gluten meal, digest of chicken by-products, poultry by-product
meal, fish meal. Wait a second. Did I just read digest of chicken by
products? I did a little research on that ingredient and found a very
helpful pet food web site that explained to me that poultry digest is
simply protein broken down by naturally-occurring enzymes. Sounds good
enough, right? That is, until you take it a touch further. What exactly
is protein broken down by by naturally-occurring enzymes? Put simply,
it’s poultry waste. As in poop, ca-ca, dookie, number two . . .
I could go on but I think you get the point. Every now and then I get
that creepy crawly feeling when I see it right there on the packaging
and I think, “you gotta be kidding
me”. Now in case there’s any argument about it, I need to go
on record that I don't think poop is a great ingredient for pet food.
And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here by saying that
poop is not an ideal source of vitamins and nutrients. Let's move on
down the list a bit. Fish meal, animal fat preserved with BHA, artificial
flavors, ethoxyquin (preservative), propylene glycol. Let's stop there
for a bit. Ethoxyquin is a great rubber preservative (yes, rubber preservative!)
and pesticide. But for pet food? I found it interesting that OSHA has
ethoxyquin listed as a hazardous chemical. It was given a rating a rating
of 3 on a scale of 1 to 6. As a reference point, a substance with a rating
of 6 is so toxic that seven drops of it can be fatal in humans. So 3
is one of your mid-level poisons, not the highest, not the lowest, just
one of your solid run of the mill hazardous chemicals that our pets eat
in this country every day. In fact, pets can consume up to 150 ppm (parts
per million) of ethoxyquin per feeding. By contrast the maximum allowed
amount for humans in foods such as eggs, meat, poultry, fruits, etc.
is 0.5 ppm. Why is Fido getting 300 times more than a human? Because
companies can get away with it.There has been a movement to reduce this
amount to 75 ppm -- only 150 times more than the average human. Laboratory
studies show that ethoxyquin in rats at a rate of 0.2 ppm have led to
kidney, liver, and thyroid gland problems, as well as to a reduced growth
rate. Now back to some of those other ingredients. How about fish meal?
Fish meal for pets is stabilized with ethoxyquin at a level of 400-1000
parts per million. That's a lot of rubber preservative! BHA? Studies
show it to be linked to stomach, urinary, and esophageal cancer. On the
other hand propylene glycol, which is used in semi-moist pet foods, has
been linked to kidney damage and central nervous system depression in
laboratory studies. And that’s not the worst of it by far. Recently
in Arklines, the official magazine of Animal Ark (a no-kill shelter for
animals --www.animalark.mn.org),
an interesting article was published by staff member Mike Fry. The article
referenced a report by Patrick White of Reuters on Sanimal, a 62 year-old
rendering company in Quebec, Canada which had recently discontinued the
processing of euthanized dogs and cats sold for pet food manufacture. That’s
right, pets used as a meat source in pet food! No wonder there are so many
dog health problems out there. In related news, the article referenced
data released by the Center for Veterinary
Medicine
from a 1996
study that found sodium pentobarbital (the most common chemical used in
the euthanization of animals) in preliminary samplings of several commercial
pet foods. Sounds like the terms “dog” food and “cat” food
may refer to the ingredients -- not just who they’re intended for.
Not only that, but a recent University of Minnesota study concluded that
sodium pentobarbital can survive the rendering process. Nothing like a
little euthanization chemicals in the pet food. For me all of this just
points to the fact that we as consumers must always keep ourselves informed,
so we can make sure that the poop stays in the yard -- not in our pet’s
food dish.
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Sojourner Farms. All rights reserved.
