Are Ingredients Enough for Choosing Dog or Cat Food?
Too many decisions about pet food are made from the ingredients list on the bag. That’s definitely not enough, and here’s why.
All over the internet, there are websites that “review” dog and cat food. When you get down to looking at those reviews, though, the reality isn’t very helpful. Almost every internet review I know of considers just the ingredients list or possibly the guaranteed analysis that’s printed on the bag. But, as many people are finding out, the bag can be exceptionally deceptive.
As one example, did you know that in the US, a dog food company can claim that their food is “All Natural” if the producing company doesn’t add anything that isn’t natural? However, they can legally use (and not declare) ingredients that are anything but natural. They can, for example, claim that their food is “Hormone-free” simply because they don’t add hormones. They don’t have to account for what their ingredient supplier has added to the food or what was already in the food before the supplier bought it.
For another example, in the US, a dog food company can use meat sources that are truly disgusting—dead, diseased, dying, disabled, or drugged meat sources. Then they can proudly say on their label: “100% beef” or “whole chicken.” From labels like that, how can consumers tell the difference between high-quality ingredients and ingredients that we would never willingly feed to our dogs?
Those are just two of many ways that the bag label can be legal but very deceptive. From reading the ingredients list, there’s no way to tell what the quality of those ingredients is.
So here are things I suggest for choosing dog (or cat) food:
Start with the company. How many brands and formulas do they produce? Do they, for example, produce a cheap, poor-quality brand as well as an expensive, high-quality brand? If so, what does that say about the company? How committed are they to healthy nutrition? How reliable are they likely to be?
Consider recalls. How many recalls has the company had over the years? If it’s more than one (or only one, if that one had serious consequences), is the company trustworthy? In the US, people can check the FDA website to search for pet food recalls: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/petfoodrecall/.
Find out about customer support. Next, what kind of customer support does the company offer? In the event of a future recall, how would they let customers know that their particular bag of food was affected? Will people have to find out from the news—if they find out at all? And what about questions? Can you talk directly with the formulating veterinarian to get questions answered?
Consider recall prevention. On the subject of recalls, what does the company do to proactively prevent future recalls? Does the company test every batch of food before any product is sold from that batch? If a company has had multiple recalls, they are either not testing, or they’re not testing well enough. Talking with the formulating vet may be the only way to find out how proactive and thorough the company is.
Consider certifications. All dog food on the US market is AAFCO-certified. That certification is, unfortunately, just about meaningless, as the worst-quality products can meet the requirements. By that I mean products with nearly useless sources of protein (such as corn, wheat, soy, meat byproducts, meat and bone meal, etc.) definitely get AAFCO certification. So that’s not enough. What about APHIS certification? That is a higher standard in the US for pet foods that are approved for sale to the European community. APHIS isn’t a perfect standard, but it is much higher than AAFCO. Find out if the company you’re considering has APHIS certification.
Know what the protein means. What is the main protein source? A lot of reviews say that the first five ingredients should include one or more named meats (chicken, turkey, salmon, venison, for example). That’s on the right track, but it isn’t enough. First, having more than one named meat in the main ingredients says nothing about how much meat (or what quality of meat) is included. A food listing “chicken, turkey” may well contain less meat or lower quality meat than one containing “chicken meal.” Read on for more details about that.
Understand chicken meal vs chicken. The best protein source is actually a named meal, such as chicken meal or turkey meal. Why? A meal is the edible parts of the chicken, cooked to remove most of the water. In an ingredient called just “chicken,” water accounts for 40-60% of the weight. In “chicken meal,” most of that water is gone. So “chicken meal” contains far more protein per ounce than “chicken.”
Understand the quality of the protein. Is it enough for the bag to say “chicken meal”? No. It’s important to find out the quality of the chicken. Is it free-range? Is it hormone- and preservative-free? Is it USDA-approved for human consumption? A lot of pet foods use meat sources that animal lovers wouldn’t willingly feed to their companions.
Understand “organic.” Should the meat source be “organic”? Certified organic meat for pet foods sounds like a great idea. But is it? In reality, there is no sufficient source of “organic” meats for pet food production. The meats labeled as organic come from organic carcasses that have already been processed to remove the meat for human products. Then the carcasses go through a deboner. Think of your Thanksgiving turkey carcass, picked nearly clean. That’s what pet foods start with for “organic” meat (but raw, of course). After the deboning process, the small bits of meat contain bits of bone, cartilage, and tendon. Those things aren’t dangerous per se, but they’re also not very valuable. Having them there makes the protein percentage on the bag deceptive. Yes, bone contains protein, but dogs and cats can’t do much with it. So the usable protein level of a food labeled as “organic” is likely to be much lower than the bag lists.
Consider freshness. How long has the food sat in a warehouse or the back of a semi trailer before it gets to the consumer? If it’s sold in a store, chances are it has spent at least six months and maybe as much as eighteen months being stored. No matter how nutritional the food is to start with, anything stored for that length of time is losing nutritional value the whole time, unless it’s laced with chemical preservatives that add their own dangers to the food. The ideal is to find a food that consumers can get within about two months of production.
Consider suppliers. Next, how well does the company know its ingredient suppliers, its food production people, its packagers, and its shippers? Are all of the ingredients produced here in the US? Talking to the formulating veterinarian may be the only way to know those things.
Delve into ingredients. Finally, it’s time to find out the truth about many pet food ingredients. For that, I highly recommend watching a video that covers the whole gamut of problem ingredients as well as high-quality ingredients. You can see the video here: www.TrilogyOnline.com/AllHealth. Just click on the blue Pets tab and scroll down a little bit.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Rebecca@PawPrintsPet.com or Virgil@PawPrintsPet.com. Or go to www.PawPrintsPet.com (our photography site).
PawPrintsLife Blog
Monday, July 27, 2009
