What’s In Your Pet Food? (Part 1)

For many of us, commercial cat or dog food is the solution to our pet’s appetite. It’s easy, tasty, simple, and answers the question of what to serve them. However, is it the best option or the healthiest?

One problem in the industry is that the products are motivated by cost. So reasonably, if an ingredient is of higher quality, it will be used in a better petfood, and so lesser quality food will end up in the less expensive products.

Because of this, the ingredients in pet food will probably be poorer than human meals. As well, the regulations for labeling and contents are not enforced the same way as person’s foods, which could cause some to ignore the laws.

Meat is expensive, so to reduce costs, extender and filler are used. As was shown in March of 2007, tainted filler resulted in deaths. The culprit was gluten, which was used to enhance and extend the pet food.

Other extenders include ‘byproducts’, a term that includes a wide variety of organs, and which may hide a huge host of serious issues.

Using byproducts provides more protein for the pet food, and raises the animal content of it, but is an poorer quality food for pets to eat.

In the preparation of animals for human consumption, the quality pieces are removed first. What’s left is usable, but is rarely labeled individually, instead being grouped under the term by-products. This term can include ligaments, lungs, blood, intestines, fat trimmings, spleens, heads, unborn babies, livers, bones, feet, and various other parts.

1 2 »