What you don’t know could be bad for your dog, causing illness and even death. Most of us don’t pay a lot of attention to what we feed our pets, trusting manufacturer labeling to be accurate and regulations to be followed. The truth is that there really aren’t very many rules about what can and can’t go into dog food.
Not Fit To Eat
Did you know that many different brands of dog food could contain unpleasant substances like hair, ligaments, organs, skin, nervous tissue, and meat from diseased animals? Or that spoiled meat and the bodies of euthanized zoo animals and pets could be used?
Most of the “good” meat that makes its way into dog and cat food has long since been processed so heavily that all its nutritive value is gone. If you see ingredients on your dog’s food bag like “animal meal” or “poultry broth”, you shouldn’t imagine the sort of thing you’d eat.
Animal meals are what’s left after all the meat and fat have been processed out of a carcass – any carcass at all. The remainder is ground and dried, producing a “meal” that’s similar in texture to ground grains. The broths in dog food are similarly unpleasant, made up of processed carcasses from all kinds of animals, in all kinds of condition.
Not Illegal
You might think this sort of thing would be against the law. After all, there are strict rules about what can be used in human food, and those laws are fairly well enforced. Unfortunately, pet food regulations are a lot looser and are rarely well enforced.
That means that almost anything could end up in your dog’s food, and that the labels on the package that claim it’s “healthy and balanced” have little to no meaning. All that those words mean, in a legal sense, is that those foods contain a particular percentage of fat, protein, and added minerals and vitamins.
Toxic Additives
We’ve all heard of recent pet food recalls caused by wheat gluten poisoned with melamine from China. However, that’s not the only additive that’s in pet food, and plenty of them are extremely dangerous as well. Preservatives that aren’t allowed in human food and cause serious illness in workers exposed to them are extremely common in dog food. Over time, they can cause cancer, illness, liver and kidney failure and many other problems. The food you give to your pet could be causing him or her to become sick.
Not Only Cheap Brands
Unfortunately, it’s not just the cheap brands that are causing the problem. High end and organic foods are also poorly regulated. They might be higher quality, but there’s no good way to tell what ingredients they’re using. That can make it extremely hard to find foods that are appropriate for your dog, since even those recommended by the vet could be dangerous.
Solutions
You have a number of choices when it comes to improving your pet’s food. First is to learn how to read the labels. Ingredients that come first are there in bigger percentages, so look for named meats far up on the list instead of generic terms.
You should also learn which additives and preservatives are safe and which ones are dangerous. Avoid foods with too many grains, since they tend to be bad for your pet in the long run. You can also find a number of quality recipes out there to help you create nutritious diets for your dog. Just make sure you do something!
