Last year turned out to be the worst in history for pet food recalls. While there is no way to be 100% certain that a pet food is not tainted or will be recalled, there are some important things to look for - and to avoid when selecting your dog's or cat's food - to greatly improve your odds in purchasing a healthy, safe pet food.
Judging the safety or the nutritional value of a pet food starts by ignoring the advertising, the price of the pet food, and ignoring the front of the bag. The real signs to the safety of a dog food or cat food lie on the back or side of the bag or can in the 'Ingredient Listing'. Regardless of what marketing terms ('choice', 'premium', and so on) are on the front of the bag or can of pet food, a pet owner cannot determine the quality or how safe the food is unless they look at the ingredients. With dry foods there can be 90 different ingredients (or more), with canned foods there can be 50 or more different ingredients. But don't panicyou don't have to understand hundreds of different pet food ingredients! You just need to be aware of a few key ingredientspet food ingredients that you do NOT want to see in a dog food or cat food (or treats).
'Wheat Gluten', 'Corn Gluten', or 'Rice Gluten'. These three ingredients were the bad boy pet food ingredients of 2007. Tainted glutens were found to be the cause of thousands of dogs and cats becoming ill and dying. It is not that glutens themselves are toxic to pets - these ingredients have been used in pet foods for years. The problem was the source or manufacturer of the glutens - imported from countries with far less quality standards than in the US. (The majority of glutens used in the US pet foods are from imported sources.) These imported glutens contained added chemicals that caused crystals to form in the kidneys of dogs and cats.
As well, glutens provide little nutritional value to a pet food. They can be used as a thickener and as a protein boost for pet foods. Adult maintenance dog foods must provide a minimum of 18% protein, adult maintenance cat foods must provide a minimum of 26% protein. Often times a pet food does not provide the required percentage of protein from meat ingredients and glutens can be added to boost the protein levels. An optimal pet food protein should be from a meat source.
'By Products'. By-products have never been the cause of a pet food recall, but they are definitely ingredients you want to avoid feeding your pet. To give you an understanding of by-products, I'd like to compare this pet food ingredient to pies - you know, the dessert! How many different types of pies you can think of? There are apple pies, cherry pies, chocolate pies, meringue pies, meat pies, mud pies, pie in math, cow pies (yuck!) - I think you get my point. Now imagine if you purchased a pie and you didn't know what kind of pie it was. You wouldn't know if it was apple pie or mud pie or even cow pie. All you would know is that you purchased a 'pie'. The same thing applies to by-products in pet food.
The American Association of Feed Control Officials (responsible for animal feed rules and regulations) defines by-products as "meat by-products is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth, and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal food. If it bears name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto."
So, with respect to pet food - a by-product is a catch-all ingredient name. All left over meat materials from the human food industry are clumped into one ingredient name - by-product. There is NO certainty of what you are feeding - one batch of pet food might be more intestine by-products while the next batch of pet food might be more liver or bone by-products. There is NO way of knowing what is actually contained in the pet food ingredient by-product (the pet food manufacturers themselves couldn't tell you exactly). Avoid dog foods and cat foods (and treats) that contain By-products of any kindChicken By-Products, Beef By-Products, Chicken By-Product Meal, Beef By-Product Meal, and so forth.
'Meat Meal', 'Meat and Bone Meal', or 'Animal Digest'. These ingredients are very similar to by-products with a similar AAFCO definition. A catch all pet food ingredient using various left-over parts of animal tissue not used in human food. Again, no certainty of what your pet is actually eating.
'Animal Fat'. The FDA has tested many different pet foods - and released a long list of foods that contain the drug pentobarbital - the drug used to euthanize dogs, cats, cattle, and horses.
The FDA's report confirmed that euthanized animals are rendered (cooked) and end up in some pet foods. However there is no answer to the question if the euthanized animals are rendered dogs and cats removed from animal shelters nationwide or if as the FDA suggests, the pentobarbital comes from rendered euthanized cattle and horses. Animal shelters nationwide - if they do not have a crematory - have euthanized dogs and cats removed by a disposal company and the animals are rendered. The FDA did develop a test in an attempt to solve the mystery - is the pentobarbital from rendered dogs and cats or is it from rendered cattle and horses? Their testing method provided no results - neither dog or cat DNA or cattle or horse DNA was found.
The FDA report did tell pet owners that the pet food ingredient 'animal fat' is the most common ingredient to contain pentobarbital. In other words, if your pet's food contains animal fat in the ingredient listing - you could be feeding your dog or cat a euthanized animal including the possibility of feeding your pet a euthanized pet. Not all pet foods or batches of the same brand of pet food that contained the ingredient animal fat tested positive to contain pentobarbital - many did.
'BHA', 'BHT', 'TBHQ', and 'Ethoxyquin'. These ingredient are chemical preservatives that you will need to scan the entire ingredient list on your pet food to find. All of these chemical preservatives are scientifically linked to tumors and cancer. A Google search of any of these preservatives will provide you with tons of controversy and scientific data. All of these chemicals are rarely used to preserve human food and if used, in far less quantity than is allowed in pet food.
'Corn', 'Wheat', 'Soy'. There is no scientific evidence that tells pet owners these common pet food ingredients are dangerous to pets. However these ingredients have been associated with pet food recalls in the past (1995, 1999, and 2005). These grains are prone to a deadly mold called aflatoxin. Pet food manufacturers - according to AAFCO regulations - are not required to test all ingredients as recalls of the past has proven.
There is more to selecting a healthy pet food for your dog or cat than simply avoiding the above mentioned ingredients. Continue to learn as much as you can about what's going into your pet's food bowl. Andalways read the ingredient listing on the label!
