Get The Facts: What's Really In Pet Food

Have you seen the article at The Animal Protection Institute ? The facts are eye-opening, to say the least! The report explores the differences between what consumers think they are buying and what they are actually getting. Here are a few tidbits:

"What most consumers don't know is that the pet food industry is an extension of the human food and agriculture industries. Pet food provides a convenient way for slaughterhouse offal, grains considered 'unfit for human consumption,' and similar waste products to be turned into profit. This waste includes intestines, udders, heads, hooves, and possibly diseased and cancerous animal parts."

"Dogs and cats are carnivores, and do best on a meat-based diet."

"Most dry foods contain a large amount of cereal grain or starchy vegetables to provide texture. These high-carbohydrate plant products also provide a cheap source of 'energy' - the rest of us call it 'calories'. Gluten meals are high-protein extracts from which most of the carbohydrate has been removed. They are often used to boost protein percentages without expensive animal-source ingredients. Corn gluten meal is the most commonly used for this purpose. Wheat gluten is also used to create shapes like cuts, bites, chunks, flakes, and slices, and as a thickener for gravy. In most cases, foods containing vegetable proteins are among the poorer quality foods."

"Today, the diets of cats and dogs are a far cry from the variable meat-based diets their ancestors ate. The unpleasant results of grain-based, processed, year-in and year-out diets are common. Health problems associated with diet include: Urinary tract disease, Kidney disease, dental disease, obesity, chronic digestive problems, bloat, heart disease, and hyperthyroidism."

"Many nutritional problems appeared with the popularity of cereal based commercial pet foods. Some have occured because the diet was incomplete. Although several ingredients are now supplemented, we do not know what future researchers may discover that should have been supplemented in pet foods all along."

If you think that your pets' food is not cereal based because of the ingredients and the order in which they are listed.....think again. You NEED to read this report.