How Safe is Commercial Pet Food?

The information in this section is adapted from the copy righted material on the Web site of the animal Protection Institute (www.api4animals.com) and provided as a service to pet lovers.

Most consumers are unaware that the pet food industry is an extension of the human food industry, owned by the same large manufacturers for the most part.

Pet food provides a place for slaughterhouse waste and grains considered “unfit for human consumption“ to be turned into profit. This waste includes cow tongues, esophagi, and possibly diseased and cancerous meat. The “whole grains” used have had the starch removed and the oil extracted (usually by chemical processing) for vegetable oil; or they are the hulls and other remnants from the milling process.

There are many different brands of pet food available in this country. While many of the foods on the market are virtually the same, containing ingredients as described above, not all of the pet food manufacturing companies use this poor quality and potentially dangerous ingredients.

Those companies devoted to producing natural, holistic food are more likely to use fresher human-grade ingredients that are better for your pet.

There are both bad and good sources of ingredients commonly listed on commercial pet food labels. Here are common ingredients and what you should know about where they come from.

Protein: The proteins in processed foods come from a variety of sources. There is large amount of confusion among pet owners when they read terms like chicken, chicken meal, and chicken by product meal. Here is how these terms are defined by AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials).

• Chicken meal: The rendered product from a combination of flesh and skin, with or without accompanying bone, derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chickens, exclusive of feather, heads, feet, and entrails.
• Chicken (or poultry) by-product meal: Consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of slaughtered chicken (or poultry) such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as occur in good rendering practices. 

By-products: When animals are slaughtered, the choice cuts, such as lean muscle tissue, are trimmed away from the carcass for human consumption. Whatever remains of the carcass (bones, blood, pus, intestine, ligaments, and almost all the other parts not generally consumed by the humans) is used in pet food. Such ingredients are listed on pet food labels as meat, poultry, or fish by-products, without detailing the actual contents. Many of these by-products are indigestible and provide a poor source of nutrition for dogs. The amount of nutrition founds in the by-products of the meat, poultry, and fishing industries varies from vat of dog food.

Some holistic veterinarians claim that feeding slaughterhouse wastes to animals increases their risk of getting cancer and other degenerative disease. While this remains to be proven, there is no doubt that feeding these by-products provides little nutrition and may actually cause various diseases.

Fat: If you have ever noticed a pungent odor when you open a new bag of pet food, you are smelling refined animal fat, kitchen grease, and other oils too rancid for human consumption or deemed otherwise inedible.

Restaurant grease has become a major component of feed-grade animal fat over the last 15 years. This grease is usually kept outside for weeks, exposed to extreme temperatures with no regard for its future use.

Rendering companies pick up this rancid grease and mix the different types of fat together, stabilize them with powerful antioxidants to retard further spoilage, and then sell the blended products to pet food companies.

These fats are sprayed directly onto dried kibble or extruded pet food pellet to make an otherwise bland or distasteful product palatable. The fat also acts as a binding agent to which manufacturers add other flavor enhancers. Pet food scientist discovered that animals love the taste of these sprayed fats.

Carbohydrates and grain products: The amount of grain products used in pet food has risen over the last decade. The availability of nutrients in grain products is dependent upon the digestibility of the grain.

The amount and type of a carbohydrate in pet food determines the amount of nutrient value the animal actually gets. Dogs (and cats) can almost completely absorb carbohydrates from some grains while up to 20 percent of other grains can escape digestion.

A carbohydrate that escapes digestion is of little nutritional value due to bacteria in the colon that ferment carbohydrates. Some ingredients, such as peanut hulls, are used strictly for “filler” and have no nutritional value at all.

Many pet food companies use a technique called splitting to hide that fact that products with less nutritive value actually make up the bulk of the diet For example, a pet food might list chicken, ground yellow corn and corn gluten meal. The latter two ingredients are both corn-based products, basically the same ingredient. By listing them separately, it appears there is less corn than chicken in the product, even though the combined weight of the corn ingredients outweighs the chicken and should therefore be listed first on the label.

Flavorings: Garlic and onion are flavorings often added to processed foods. In the case of natural-style diets, garlic is often added for its purported medicinal properties as an antibacterial, anticancer, immune-stimulating element. At the dosage listed, the concentration of garlic is unlikely to be toxic and may be helpful to the pet. Onions, on the other hand, are potentially more toxic, especially for cats who can develop severe anemia from eating them. I do not recommend including onions in food for dogs or cats.

Additives and preservatives: Owners who desire to feed their pets a natural, chemical-free diet should be concerned about additives and preservatives. Many additives are added to commercial pet foods to improve the stability, appearance, or odor of the food.

Additives provide no nutritional value and are mainly used to make the food appealing to pet owner; they are, after all, the ones who buy it. Since pets are mostly color-blind, a dog doesn’t care what color his food is. However, the owner may prefer to feed the dog food that is red like fresh raw meat rather than brown like old meat. The artificial coloring used in this case has no nutritive value.

Additives also include emulsifiers to prevent water and fat from separating and anti caking chemicals to keep ingredients from binding together. Antimicrobials reduce spoilage antioxidants are used as preservatives to prevent fat from turning rancid and to prolong the shelf life of the product. Preservatives are necessary ingredients in pet foods, but natural antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E are better than chemical products such as ethoxyquin (EQ), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), and butylated (BHT).

According to research by this Animal Protection Institute, two-thirds of pet foods contain preservatives added by the manufacturer. Of the remaining third, most include ingredients already stabilized by synthetic preservatives. For example, premixed vitamin additives that must be added to pet foods to replace the vitamins lost during the processing of the food can also contain preservatives. This means that your dog may actually eat food with a variety of preservatives that have been added at the rendering plant, at the manufacturing plant, and in the supplemental vitamins.
       

 Just as many people are realizing the effects that the chemicals added to processed foods have on our bodies, holistic doctors and concerned pet owners are realizing what the chemicals in processed pet foods are doing to dog. There are a number of chronic disorders, such as various cancers, immune diseases, arthritis, and allergies, that are blamed on the chemicals found in pet foods. Even though these chemicals in the low amounts in pet foods are regarded as safe, we have no firm data on whether or not they may be related to these chronic disorders.

In some cases (as with ethoxyquin), the many years of use seem to suggest “safety,” but there may be a toxic accumulation effect. In the last 40 years, they number of food additives has greatly increased. Of the many recognized food additives today, no toxicity information is available for 46 percent of them. Cancer-causing chemicals are sometimes permitted if they are used at levels considered safe. The risk of continued ingestion of these cancer-causing agents has not been studied and the buildup of these chemicals may be harmful.

A CLOSER LOOK

Ethoxyquin (EQ), butylated hyroxyanisole (BHA), and butylated hydroxtoluene (BHT) are the chemical antioxidant preservatives most commonly used in processed food for animal consumption. While ethoxyquin use is worrisome among pet owners, 75 years of study conclude that the product appears to be safe when used at the low concentration of 0.015 percent.

Additionally, research has shown that ethoxyquin can interfere with cancer induction by other chemicals (by binding carcinogenic chemicals and enzymes that convert harmless chemicals into those that can cause cancer). Many holistic doctors, however, claim that ethoxyquin is a major cause of disease, skin problems, and infertility in dogs. As a result, many pet owners fear using ethoxyquin, so most of the better pet food manufacturers have stopped using it, along with BHA and BHT. They have replaced these chemical preservatives with natural antioxidants such as vitamins C and E. While BHA and BHT are also approved for use in people and animals at the recommended “safe” levels, most holistic pet owners prefer to avoid foods containing these chemicals as well.

The reason for the prevalence of the chemical preservatives is that they cost less than vitamins C and E. The cheaper generic dog foods are most likely to contain the less expensive chemical preservatives. Once again, read the label if you choose to give your dog processed food.

Whenever possible, the healthier alternative is to purchase natural-style dog food that does not contain chemicals or to prepare healthy homemade recipes. If you must feed your dog a processed food other than the natural-style, look for one that lists the least amount of chemical additives. This will reduce toxicity to your dog.

With any kind of processed food, supplement with natural products such as brewers yeast, fatty acids, kelp barley grass, cooked liver, enzyme products, and sprouted beans or seeds to help replace nutrients lost during processing.