|
What's
Really in Commercial Pet Food?
By Betsy Swart
(As appeared in Friends of Animals, Summer 1998)
Go into
any grocery store and you will see the pet food shelves
stacked high with brightly c olored cans, boxes and bags
of supposedly delicious and nutritious fare for your companion
animals. Labels laud the latest pet food creations as gourmet
specialty foods which also provide the added benefit of
being low fat or low calorie or formulated scientifically
to maintain your pet's health and well being. Behind the
fancy packaging, though, is a world of obscene cuisine that
few consumers could ever imagine.
Surely
the most horrifying ingredients of commercial pet food is
other dogs and cats. In 1990, John Eckhouse, a reporter
for the San Francisco Chronicle, stunned the public with
an article entitled How Dogs and Cats Get Recycled into
Pet Food. Eckhouse wrote, Each year, millions of dead American
dogs and cats are processed along with billions of pounds
of other animal materials by companies known as renderers.
The finished products . . . tallow and meat meal . . . serve
as raw materials for thousands of items that include cosmetics
and pet food. Of course, when the article was published,
pet food companies made the usual denials. But federal and
state agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA), and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA),
confirmed that pets are rendered on a routine basis after
they die in animal shelters or are disposed of by health
authorities.
The
end product frequently finds its way into pet food. According
to Eckhouse, just one rendering plant in California processed
somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of dogs and cats
a day. Eileen Layne of the California Veterinary Medical
Association told the Chronicle, When you read pet food labels
and they say meat and bone meal, that's what it is: cooked
and converted animals, including some dogs and cats.
Another
pet food fact that will startle consumers is that those
pretty little cans on grocery store shelves are often filled
with slaughterhouse waste that is deemed not fit for human
consumption. Dr. Wendell Belfield, a veterinarian who for
many years also worked as a meat inspector for the US Department
of Agriculture and the state of California writes, For seven
years, I was a veterinary meat inspector. . . I waded through
blood, water, pus and fecal materials, inhaled the fetid
stench from the killing floor and listened to the death
cries of slaughtered animals. Prior to World War II, most
slaughterhouses were all-inclusive; that is, livestock was
slaughtered and processed in one location. There was a section
for smoked meats, a section for processing meats into sausages
and a section for rendering. After World War II, the meat
industry became more specialized . . . The rendering of
slaughter waste became a separate specialty -- no longer
within the jurisdiction of federal meat inspectors and out
of the public eye. (Dr. Wendell Belfield, Food Not Fit for
a Pet in Earth Island Journal, Summer, 1996).
What
does slaughter waste really mean? It means animal carcasses
from the 4-D bin -- animals, which are dead, diseased, dying
or disabled when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Slaughter
wastes also includes animal parts such as heads, feet, toenails,
hair, feathers and mammary glands. Waste also judged suitable
for rendering includes cancerous tumors, bowels, blood clots
and stomach contents. According to Ann Martin, author of
"Foods Pets Die For", what goes on at the renderers is not
a pretty picture. At the rendering plant, the ingredients
described above are ground together and cooked at temperatures
between 220-270 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes to one
hour. The grease or tallow that rises to the top is a source
of animal fat in pet food. The remaining material is put
into a press where the moisture is squeezed out to produce
meat and bone meal.
Another
common chemical in pet food is, surprisingly, sodium pentobarbital.
Of the many dead pets at the renderers, most have been euthanized.
That means their bodies still contain a heavy dose of the
euthanizing agent. Dr. Belfield writes that, according to
University of Minnesota researchers, the sodium pentobarbital
used to euthanize pets survives rendering without undergoing
degradation.
Other
ingredients of commercial pet food include fat stabilizers,
which are added to the finished rendered product to prevent
it from becoming rancid. Common stabilizers include BHA
(butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene)
and ethoxyquin. BHA and BHT are known to cause liver and
kidney dysfunction, and ethoxyquin is a suspected carcinogen.
Most semi-moist pet foods contain propylene glycol, closely
related to a popular antifreeze agent known to destroy red
blood cells. Lead is a common ingredient of commercial pet
food as well. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) issued a study called Lead in Animal Foods which reported
that a nine-pound cat fed commercial pet food ingests more
lead than the amount considered potentially toxic for children.
Dr.
Belfield remarks, I have been practicing small animal medicine
for more than 25 years. Every day, I see the casualties
of pet industry propaganda. But the professors in the teaching
institutions of veterinary medicine generally support an
industry that has little regard for the quality of health
in our companion animals . . . The most frequently asked
question in my practice is Which commercial pet food do
you recommend?' My standard answer is None.'
What
You Can Do
Inform yourself about the issue. Read Food Not Fit for a
Pet, Dr. Wendell O. Belfield, in Earth Island Journal, Summer,
1996. Or pick up a copy of Ann Martin's new book, Foods
Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food , published
by New Sage Press, PO Box 607, Troutdale, OR 97060. (503)
695-2211.
Cats
have nutritional requirements that a strictly vegetarian
diet may not satisfy. When buying cat food, choose from
companies such as Evolution, Nature's Recipe, Nutro, Lick
Your Chops, and Old Mother Hubbard. Even when buying these
brands, consult labels carefully. Avoid products containing
meat by-products; poultry by-products; and meat and/or bone
meal. The only exceptions to this rule are companies that
make their own meal. This can be determined by calling the
company in question.
Reproduced
with permission of Friends of Animals
|
