Your pet instinctively craves their ancestral diet for vibrant health and well-being. Sadly for your pets, the pet food industry is rapidly becoming Big Business. Big Business to the tune of $15 billion worldwide. Behind closed doors, strategic acquisitions of smaller companies are quietly taking place – clearly to capitalize on the tremendous profits the pet food industry offers. What most pet owners dont realize is that the pet food industry is actually an extension of the food and agricultural industries. Pet food provides these giant multinational corporations a very convenient and very profitable built-in market for wastes left over from their human food production. But heres the problem… Your beloved pet was never designed to eat wastes. Todays commercial pet food is a far cry from your dogs or cats ancestral diet – the diet their species has thrived upon for thousands of years. Do You Know Whats in Your Pets Food? Hello, this is Dr. Karen Becker. As a licensed Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Im pleased to have joined forces with Dr. Mercola to help educate readers about natural animal health. Its become my personal mission to help support pet owners like yourself in making smart choices for feeding your pets. Just as with humans, your pets diet largely determines his or her overall health. Considering todays choices for feeding your pet, Im more concerned than ever for your pets health and their ancestral need for a natural, balanced diet. Kibble? A far cry from a cats natural diet. With Big Business marketing machine, it has become increasingly difficult to determine whats in that bag or can of pet food. When the label says chicken, do you know exactly what part(s) of the chicken youre getting? How about real meat? Whats more, the Guaranteed Analysis printed on every package is meaningless unless youre willing to do the required calculations. Heres the real truth about your pets diet: Unless you prepare your pets food yourself, you really dont know for sure whats in it. Whos Minding the Store? Who actually determines what goes into your pets bowl of food? • The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) establishes labeling requirements and nutrient profiles for pet food manufacturers. • The National Research Council of the Academy of Sciences (NRC) provides nutritional standards for AAFCO. When you see on the label of your pets food formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO nutrient profiles, you know the manufacturer used these profiles to formulate their products. However, when it comes to enforcing and ensuring safe and healthy food for your pet, Im sorry to report that regulation and enforcement varies widely from state to state. The only entities actually enforcing pet food quality are state feed control officials. In some states, they may run basic tests to ensure the Guaranteed Analysis of the food. In other states, they dont even test. What is the Meat in Your Pets Food? I feel its important for you to know the truth about the meat in your pets food, whether you buy it from the supermarket or a specialty natural pet food store. Protein in your pets food comes in various forms – meat, poultry or fish, meat or poultry meal, and meat by-products. In the food industry, only about 50 percent of every animal can be used as food for human consumption. The remaining parts, or by-products – heads, feet, bones, feathers, blood, intestines, organs, fat scraps, even unborn fetuses – are used in pet food and animal feed. The Pet Food Institute – the trade association of pet food manufacturers – acknowledges the use of by-products in pet foods. To quote them directly: The growth of the pet food industry not only provided pet owners with better food for their pets, but also created profitable additional markets for American farm products and for the byproducts of the meat packing, poultry, and other food industries which prepare food for human consumption. Commonly youll find meat meals in pet foods, including poultry meal, by-product meals, and meat-and-bone meal. Meal signifies that these ingredients are not fresh; they are rendered. Rendering is the process where various ingredients are emptied into a large vat and boiled for several hours. These high temperatures can damage proteins and destroy natural enzymes. From a health standpoint, denatured proteins from high processing temperatures can lead to food allergies and intolerances and inflammatory bowel disease. But heres whats so controversial: In addition to food animal scraps, rendering, by law, can include grocery store expired meat (Styrofoam wrapping intact), road kill, diseased and disabled (and dead) cattle, and even euthanized pets. Pet food companies claim they no longer process dead dogs and cats (insiders admit they previously did), but the FDA has found pentobarbital, the most common euthanasia drug, in rendered meat-and-bone meal and animal fat. If your pet food label states one or more named meats such as chicken or lamb, they are not by-products. However, they are still mostly leftover scraps and bones. Chicken consists of backs, spines and ribs, with minimal meat left on the bones. And yes, bones can count as protein! Unless the label on your pets food states that the food is safe for human consumption, you can bet the protein source is less-than-optimal. What Does Your Pet Need for Healthy Survival? The ancestral hunt By nature, both cats and dogs are carnivores and predators. And if you consider a dog or cats anatomy, youll quickly realize they were not designed for todays fabricated diets. Over countless generations, wolves and wild dogs ate prey – including their meat, bones, and stomach contents. They scavenged for other tidbits such as eggs, ripe fruit, and insects. Cats, given the chance, still delight in their instinctive cravings for birds and mice. Equipped with teeth that grab and puncture, they lack the ability to grind up the most common cat food – dry kibble. As reflected by their ancestral diets, both cats and dogs require high levels of quality protein to truly thrive. And considering theres a mere 0.2% difference between your dogs DNA sequence and that of the Gray Wolf, your pets nutritional needs have not changed significantly either. Protein is an important part of every cell. Essential amino acids from quality protein build healthy cells, organs, muscle tissue, enzymes, and hormones. Not much has changed Protein is especially critical for puppies and kittens for growth and for mature animals for maintenance and repair. Fat provides energy, essential vitamins and fatty acids. Ideally from natural animal sources, fatty acids are important for healing, reproduction, normal cell membrane synthesis, and a healthy coat and skin. Cats and dogs natural ancestral diets are full of high-quality protein, animal-sourced fatty acids, fiber, nutrients and variety – a far cry from todays processed pet foods. In todays commercial pet foods, gluten meals – mostly cheap corn gluten – are frequently used to boost protein percentages to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles. These low-quality vegetable proteins replace more expensive meat-source ingredients. Wheat gluten is used to create those consumer - appealing chunks and bites in canned and dry pet foods.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 06:04:42 +0000