ADDITIVES. Nearly all commercial pet foods contain at least some additives. These include coloring agents, texturizers, drying agents, humectants, binders, and dozens of other items with numerous other purposes.
For instance, all those "slices" and "bits" and "shreds" in canned dog and cat foods--you didn't think those were really meat, did you? No, they're mostly textured vegetable protein (such as wheat gluten) that's been formed, cut, dyed, and shaped to look like pieces of meat. Even some of the vegetables in canned foods are fake: carrot chunks and peas may be mainly colored wheat gluten.
An interesting ingredient you'll see in many canned foods, especially the cheaper ones, is titanium dioxide. This is the compound that makes white paint white. It is used to lighten the color of the mix so that added colors--those appealing browns and reds that make pet food look sort of like meat, will show up. One reason for this is the use of condemned ingredients in the food. At the slaughterhouse, carcasses and parts condemned for human consumption are required to be marked to make sure they don't find their way back into the human food chain. This is done by dousing the meat or other parts with either purple dye (the same stuff used by the USDA to mark the quality of beef, such as "USDA choice"; it's made from grapes), or liquified charcoal. Both of these are harmless, but will obviously contribute their color to any mix they're used in. Since most pet parents aren't going to find purple or black pet food appealing, the food is dyed white with titanium dioxide and then dyed again to the desired color.
All dry pet foods contains even more additives and preservatives than canned food; canning is itself a preserving process. The most worrisome are the chemical preservatives BHA, BHT, propyl gallate, and ethoxyquin. Ethoxyquin is banned from nearly all human food products (except certain spices) due to its cancer-causing properties. Most manufacturers have changed to less-controversial preservatives, such as Vitamin E (tocopherol), but ethoxyquin is still used in many "prescription" foods. Ethoxyquin is required for imported fish meal, a prominent ingredient in many pet foods, but not listed on the label; there is a natural substitute (NaturOx) but it is expensive and few companies use it.
CONTAMINANTS. Consumers these days are concern about pet food contamination, for good reason. The 2007 recall of pet food made with contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein from China sickened tens of thousands of pets, and thousands of dogs and cats died.
Consumers should also be concerned about pesticide residues, antibiotics, and molds contained in pet food ingredients. Meat from downer animals may be loaded with drugs, including antibiotics and barbiturate used for euthanasia; some of these are known to pass unchanged through all the processing done to create a finished pet food. The FDA did a study on pentobarbital euthanasia solution and found it in multiple dry dog foods; they attributed it to euthanized livestock, and said the levels were too low to harm dogs, but no one has considered the cumulative effects of eating such food day after day, year after year. The ingredients most often associated with a positive test for pentobarbital were animal fat and meat-and-bone-meal. Tests for dog and cat DNA were, fortunately, negative.
Fungal contamination of grains is also a serious consideration. Corn is commonly affected by aflatoxin mold, which secretes toxic wastes. There have been several incidents in which fungal toxins resulted in food recalls after dogs became sick; at least 120 dogs died in just 2 such cases.
Crops that are condemned for human consumption due to excessive pesticide residues can legally be used, without limit, in food intended for animals, including pets. Not only are our pets directly exposed, the livestock eating such crops are going to end up back in the human food chain! As well, toxic sewer sludge has also been used as fertilizer in several states, feeding the crops that feed us, livestock, and our pets.
Perhaps the scariest thing about contamination is that no one can predict what the next catastrophic contaminant will be. After the aflatoxin cases, pet food companies started testing for fungus and mold. After the melamine debacle, they started testing for melamine. But there are thousands, if not millions, of toxins and chemicals that could potentially find their way into pet food; they can't test for everything. But pet food recalls are quite common; there's usually at least one per year and sometimes many more than that. The best we can do is buy products from reputable manufacturers, made with better quality ingredients, and then hope that the next big recall doesn't affect your brands!
Dr. Jean Hofve is a retired holistic veterinarian with a special interest in nutrition and behavior. Her informational website, http://www.littlebigcat.com, features an extensive free article library on pet health and nutrition, as well as a free e-newsletter. Dr. Hofve founded Spirit Essences Holistic Remedies for Animals (http://www.spiritessence.com) in 1995; and it remains the only line of flower essence formulas designed by a veterinarian. She is a certified Medicine Woman of the Nemenhah Native American Traditional Organization who uses holistic remedies as a part of body-mind-spiritual healing.
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