Have you ever idly wondered what goes into the packet or tin of dog food, you lovingly feed your dog? Perhaps you fear the worst and don’t want to know. Putting your head in the sand may make you feel a bit better in the short term, but it is likely to cost you dearly in the long term.
Why?
Food, by virtue of its daily consumption, is one of the most important parts of your health. And obviously the same applies to your dog.
If you don’t feed your dog quality dog food, he is likely to suffer ongoing ill health. This translates into hundreds, if not thousands, in veterinarian bills.
So let’s have a look at how dog food is produced in most countries, especially by the big commercial pet food companies.
A rendering plant is sort of an adjunct to a slaughterhouse. It’s where unusable parts of slaughtered animals or dead animals on a massive scale are disposed. It also includes retail food outlet waste.
Typical unusable waste from slaughterhouses includes heads, hooves, beaks, intestines, bones, blood, etc.
Dead animals can be road kill, euthanised pets from veterinarians or animal shelters, zoo animals or horses.
Retail food waste includes food past its use by date.
On the surface, none of this sounds too bad. Perhaps you can consider most of it as acceptable ingredients for your dog food. But let’s have a closer look.
Bones, in particular spines, and brains from the heads of cattle can be the source of bovine spongiform encephalogathy (mad-cow disease, BSE), Although these parts are not permitted now, to be included in human food, policing this is almost impossible in a rendering plant.
Animals are euthanised with sodium pentobarbital. This cannot be broken down in the processing.
Euthanised dogs and cats frequently still ware collars, including pet identification discs and flea collars. Flea collars normally contain organophosphate insecticides.
Pets, zoo and farm animals can contain heavy metals from their identi chip, or ID tags and from surgical pins.
Farm animals may contain insecticide patches.
Farm animals who have died can contain toxic levels of veterinary medications, including high levels of antibiotics, hormones or pesticides, to name just a few. Animals who have died naturally, may have done so from cancer, an organ failure, TB or a host of other hazardous diseases.
Retail food waste is often still wrapped meat, past it’s use by date. Wrapping is normally styrofoam trays covered with cling film.
Euthanised pets from veterinarians and animal shelters often come in plastic bags.
Generally there is not the strict hygiene afforded to rendering plants, that there is to slaughter houses. So carcasses can be piled up waiting in summer heat. This means that maggots are a very real part of the end product, as least for that processed in summer. Rat infestations at rendering plants may not be common in many of them, but it is not rare either.
With the ever increasing cost of labour, removing collars and plastic wrapping is just out of the question. Removing implanted identichips or surgical pins would be nearly impossible.
It is unavoidable that toxic waste is a part of the end products of a rendering plant.
So that’s the raw material of a rendering plant. What about the processing? This involves grinding the raw material and then cooking for long periods under pressure and high temperature. Some may be further dried.
Depending on the particular rendering plant, the end products are called recycled meat, meat meal, poultry meal, bone meal, blood meal, animal meal, fish meal, poultry by-products, meat by-products, tallow, beef fat, chicken fat, animal fat, yellow grease, food enhancer, protein, calcium, phosphorus. Many are sold as a source of protein, energy, mineral or enhancer for farm animals, horses and pets. In fact any livestock.
About a third of rendering plant end products are used as the basis of commercial cat and dog food.
The quality bit.
The meat source,
The protein.
Thereafter, the ingredients deteriorate, with filler (perhaps sugar or melamine from China or any other cheap ‘food’), isolated and synthetic nutrients and toxic preservatives, making up the balance. Then it may be irradiated.
You may find it hard to believe that any part of the entire produce could possibly translate as nourishing dog food, that a vet would recommend for a healthy life.
The end result means that commercialisation has forced your dog to become a cannibal.
