Dog Health Food Are You Accidentally Poisoning Your Best Friend?

With more and more dog food recalls being issued, it's not hard to see why more people are turning to dog health food as an alternative. Every time there is a recall, there's lots of apologizing, but what about the dogs that died? How can any apology make up for the loss of a trusted friend?

Now theres a whole range of reasons for dog food to be recalled and some of them are exactly the same reasons as why some human food recalls occur. In at least one case there was a fungal infection on the production line, which contaminated the food. This would make me ask the question: What sort of hygiene procedures are in place that allowed this to occur?

The FDA is responsible for keeping tabs on the dog food industry, which is enormous and growing at a staggering rate. And so wed like to think that dog food conforms to the same standards as human food, but all too often this is far from the truth.

The FDA is growing increasingly under funded and understandably puts most of its resources into ensuring that human food production is kept to the required hygiene standards. That said, plenty of products still slip through when you think about how often you see food recalls at the supermarket. So where does that leave the pet food industry?

Well, the lack of official oversight means that they are mainly self-regulating. While in a perfect world this wouldnt be a problem, I have my doubts when it comes to the sort of money that is being made from dog food today. In most cases, in the battle between increased profits and better quality, profits come out on top.

And who could forget the wide-ranging pet food recalls in 2007? This was eventually traced back to contaminated rice protein and wheat gluten produced in China. One more way that a cheaply sourced ingredient is added that has little nutritional value anyway. This means that even if the standards of the US manufacturer are fantastic, it won't help if they're using tainted ingredients?

So we need to asking the hard questions of where our dog food really comes from, whats really in the food that our best friends are gobbling up and what are the long term effects on their health going to be?

Many pet owner are turning to some form of dog health food as a practical way to ensure that their pets get not only the best nutrition but also keep them safe from any pet food company blunders. At the end of the day, it's up to us to give our pets healthy and safe food but we can't always believe what the large pet food companies are telling us.