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 bioavailability 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 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
AFFCO 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 sevenfold. 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
1996
