Pet Food Alert: 4th Installment

"SPECIFIC PET FOOD INGREDIENTS
Animal and Poultry Fat You may have noticed a unique, pungent odorwhen you open a new bag of pet food - what is the source of thatdelightful smell? It is most often rendered animal fat, restaurantgrease, or other oils too rancid or deemed inedible for humans.
Restaurant grease has become a major component of feed grade animalfat over the last fifteen years. This grease, often held infifty-gallon drums, is usually kept outside for weeks, exposed toextreme temperatures with no regard for its future use.
"Fat blenders" or rendering companies then pick up this used greaseand mix the different types of fat together, stabilize them withpowerful antioxidants to retard further spoilage, and then sellthe blended products to pet food companies and other end users.
These fats are sprayed directly onto dried kibbles or extruded pelletsto make an otherwise bland or distasteful product palatable. The fatalso acts as a binding agent to which manufacturers add other flavorenhancers such as digests.
Pet food scientists have discovered that animals love the taste ofthese sprayed fats. Manufacturers are masters at getting a dog or acat to eat something she would normally turn up his or her nose at.
>>> Wheat, Soy, Corn, Peanut Hulls, and Other Vegetable Protein
The amount of grain products used in pet food has risen over the lastdecade. Once considered filler by the pet food industry, cereal andgrain products now replace a considerable proportion of the meat thatwas used in the first commercial pet foods. The availability ofnutrients in these products is dependent upon the digestibility ofthe grain.
The amount and type of carbohydrate in pet food determines the amountof nutrient value the animal actually gets. Dogs and cats can almostcompletely absorb carbohydrates from some grains, such as white rice.
Up to 20% of the nutritional value of other grains can escape digestion.The availability of nutrients for wheat, beans, and oats is poor. Thenutrients in potatoes and corn are far less available than those in rice.
Some ingredients, such as peanut hulls, are used for filler or fiber,and have no significant nutritional value. Two of the top threeingredients in pet foods, particularly dry foods, are almost alwayssome form of grain products.
Pedigree Performance Food for Dogs lists Ground Corn, Chicken By-ProductMeal, and Corn Gluten Meal as its top three ingredients. 9 Lives CrunchyMeals for cats lists Ground Yellow Corn, Corn Gluten Meal, andPoultry By-Product Meal as its first three ingredients.
Since cats are true carnivores - they must eat meat to fulfillcertain physiological needs - one may wonder why we are feedinga corn-based product to them. The answer is that corn is muchcheaper than meat.
In 1995, Nature's Recipe pulled thousands of tons of dog food offthe shelf after consumers complained that their dogs were vomitingand losing their appetite. Nature's Recipe's loss amounted to $20 million.The problem was a fungus that produced vomitoxin (an aflatoxin or"mycotoxin," a toxic substance produced by mold) contaminating thewheat.
In 1999, another fungal toxin triggered the recall of dry dog foodmade by Doane Pet Care at one of its plants, including Ol' Roy(Wal-Mart's brand) and 53 other brands. This time, the toxin killed25 dogs. Although it caused many dogs to vomit, stop eating, and havediarrhea, vomitoxin is a milder toxin than most.
The more dangerous mycotoxins can cause weight loss, liver damage,lameness, and even death as in the Doane case. The Nature'sRecipe incident prompted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)to intervene.
Dina Butcher, Agriculture Policy Advisor for North Dakota GovernorEd Schafer, concluded that the discovery of vomitoxin in Nature'sRecipe wasn't much of a threat to the human population because"the grain that would go into pet food is not a high quality grain."
Soy is another common ingredient that is sometimes used as a proteinand energy source in pet food. Manufacturers also use it to add bulkso that when an animal eats a product containing soy he will feel moresated. While soy has been linked to gas in some dogs, other dogs doquite well with it. Vegetarian dog foods use soy as a protein source."