Tips To Avoid The Next Pet Food Recall

By: Susan Thixton..

Last year turned out to be the worst in history for pet food recalls. While there is no way to be 100% certain that a pet food is not tainted or will be recalled, there are some important things to look for - and to avoid when selecting your dog's or cat's food - to greatly improve your odds in purchasing a healthy, safe pet food.

Judging the safety or the nutritional value of a pet food starts by ignoring the advertising, the price of the pet food, and ignoring the front of the bag. The real signs to the safety of a dog food or cat food lie on the back or side of the bag or can in the 'Ingredient Listing'. Regardless of what marketing terms ('choice', 'premium', and so on) are on the front of the bag or can of pet food, a pet owner cannot determine the quality or how safe the food is unless they look at the ingredients. With dry foods there can be 90 different ingredients (or more), with canned foods there can be 50 or more different ingredients. But don't panicyou don't have to understand hundreds of different pet food ingredients! You just need to be aware of a few key ingredientspet food ingredients that you do NOT want to see in a dog food or cat food (or treats).

'Wheat Gluten', 'Corn Gluten', or 'Rice Gluten'. These ingredients were the tainted ingredients that caused the pet food recall of March 2007. Glutens themselves are not toxic to pets. The problem occurred when inferior quality glutens were imported for U.S. pet foods that contained added chemicals to boost the protein levels.

As well, glutens provide little nutritional value to a pet food. They can be used as a thickener and as a protein boost for pet foods. Adult maintenance dog foods must provide a minimum of 18% protein, adult maintenance cat foods must provide a minimum of 26% protein. Often times a pet food does not provide the required percentage of protein from meat ingredients and glutens can be added to boost the protein levels. An optimal pet food protein should be from a meat source.

'By Products'. By-products have never been the cause of a pet food recall, but they are definitely ingredients you want to avoid feeding your pet. To give you an understanding of by-products, I'd like to compare this pet food ingredient to pies - you know, the dessert! How many different types of pies you can think of? There are apple pies, cherry pies, chocolate pies, meringue pies, meat pies, mud pies, pie in math, cow pies (yuck!) - I think you get my point. Now imagine if you purchased a pie and you didn't know what kind of pie it was. You wouldn't know if it was apple pie or mud pie or even cow pie. All you would know is that you purchased a 'pie'. The same thing applies to by-products in pet food.

The American Association of Feed Control Officials (responsible for animal feed rules and regulations) defines by-products as "meat by-products is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth, and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal food. If it bears name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto."

By-products are a catch-all pet food ingredient. Any or all left over animal tissue materials from the human food industry are clumped into this one ingredient. A pet owner has no certainty of what is in the pet food. One batch of pet food could contain liver or bone by-products, while the next could contain intestines - there is just no way of knowing for certain what is actually contained in the pet food.

'Meat Meal', 'Meat and Bone Meal', or 'Animal Digest'. These three ingredients are similar to by-products. AAFCO defines Meat and Bone Meal as "the rendered product from mammal tissues, including bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents, except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably to good processing practices." Again, a catch all ingredient name for the left-over parts of animals used for human food. No consistency to what is contained in these ingredients (all three of these pet food ingredient definitions are similar) - no way of knowing what is actually in your pet's food. Avoid dog foods, cat foods, and dog and cat treats that contain 'meat meal', 'meat and bone meal', or 'animal digest'.

'Animal Fat'. In 2002 the FDA tested many different brands of dog food (cat food was not tested) for the presence of the drug pentobarbital. Many brands of dog food tested positive to contain the drug. Pentobarbital is the drug used to euthanize dogs, cats, cattle, and horses.

Controversy still exists as to how a drug that is used to euthanize animals could be found in pet food. Definitely pentobarbital ends up into pet food from rendered (cooked) euthanized animals - end ingredients from the rendering process are sold to pet food manufacturers. Some pet food safety advocates say that rendered pets - euthanized and removed from animal shelters and veterinarian offices all across the country - is the source of the pentobarbital. Others say that the source is from euthanized cattle and horses. The FDA did develop testing methods in an attempt to find a definitive answer - but to date, no results have ever been released to the public - to confirm or deny the possibility that rendered pets are in pet food.

The FDA report did tell pet owners that the pet food ingredient 'animal fat' is the most common ingredient to contain pentobarbital. In other words, if your pet's food contains animal fat in the ingredient listing - you could be feeding your dog or cat a euthanized animal including the possibility of feeding your pet a euthanized pet. Not all pet foods or batches of the same brand of pet food that contained the ingredient animal fat tested positive to contain pentobarbital - many did.

'BHA', 'BHT', 'TBHQ', and 'Ethoxyquin'. These pet food ingredients are chemical preservatives and you might have to look through the entire ingredient list to find them. It is worth the look because there is plenty of clinical evidence to associate all four of these chemical preservatives with cancer and tumors (simply do a Google search on any one of these chemicals). All four of these chemical preservatives are rarely used to preserve human food and if so, are used in quantities far less than what is allowed in pet food. Avoid any dog food, cat food, or dog and cat treat that contains 'BHA', 'BHT', 'TBHQ', and 'Ethoxyquin' on the label.

'Corn', 'Wheat', 'Soy'. There is no scientific evidence that tells pet owners these common pet food ingredients are dangerous to pets. However these ingredients have been associated with pet food recalls in the past (1995, 1999, and 2005). These grains are prone to a deadly mold called aflatoxin. Pet food manufacturers - according to AAFCO regulations - are not required to test all ingredients as recalls of the past has proven.

There is more to selecting a healthy pet food for your dog or cat than simply avoiding the above mentioned ingredients. Continue to learn as much as you can about what's going into your pet's food bowl. Andalways read the ingredient listing on the label!

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