Dog Food - Unhealthy By Default

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.

What is An All Natural Dog Food?

What’s on your mind when you consider an all natural dog food? Could it be a commercial dog food which has the word ‘natural’ on the packet? Could it be you think of cooking your own dog food from scratch? Do you consider table scraps to be the ideal diet?

Wrong! None of the above will address your dog’s health, Why not?

Well, the commercial dog food starts off with very low grade meat, mostly meat by-products (the better quality going for the higher priced human food), high fat and sometimes euthanased animals, which contain the chemical sodium pentobarbital. Then, to bulk out the already cheap ‘meat’, a non-nutritional filler is added. That can be sugar, as there’s a world glut of it at the moment, or melamine if you live in China.

Then, to keep the product indefinitely at room temperature a preservative is added.

When you see a packet of dried dog food in the shop, with the slogan ‘preservative free’ ask yourself this question - how can dried ‘meat’ be kept indefinitely at room temperature without preservatives? Do you think you wouldn’t have heard of a new way to do this, if there was?

So either there is no ‘meat’ or there is preservative present. Trouble is, the preservatives used are very strong, cause huge health problems and aren’t allowed in human food.

So commercial dog food can be crossed off as an all natural dog food!.

I see quite a lot of ‘dog experts’ on the internet advocating you cook your own dog food. Whilst that is hugely better than commercial pet food, it’s still missing the nutrients that are lost in cooking. Typically these are vitamins and enzymes, both essential for a healthy dog. But other nutrients are altered by cooking. Fat changes during the cooking process from a beneficial food to a harmful one.

So you can cross though this one too, as an all natural dog food.

What about table scraps? That depends so much on the table scraps. If the human food is a good, natural one of lots of raw fruit and veg, with lightly cooked meat, then these table scraps have the potential of being the best dog food out of all three options, as long as there is enough left over to satisfy your dog’s nutritional needs.

If, however, your diet is typically fast food with a lot of processed food, then these table scraps will be little better than the commercial dog food.

Yet another cross through.

There is only one all natural dog food and that’s the one dogs evolved on. Nothing that mankind has done has improved one iota on that. And considerable decline has occurred.

Dogs have evolved over millions of years on an all natural dog food and it keeps them happy and healthy.

Once you get to grips with the idea of how dogs evolved, duplicating that diet within the constraints of what is available and the limits on your time, is not that difficult. However, there are a few important things you need to know such as:

• what food should not be given more than once a week
• should bones be given
• what carbohydrates are the best ones and how much
• are there any fruit or vegetables that shouldn’t be given
• what amino acid is essential to a dog’s healthy skin
• should you supplement the diet
• how do you convert the diet of an elderly or sick dog safely

When you change the diet of your dog from a commercial pet food to an all natural dog food, there may initially be a de-toxing period. This is normal and natural, but can seem a bit scary to you if you don’t understand why it’s happening and the symptoms. It should be of short duration, depending on your dog’s age and level of health.

Dogs digestion is robust. They have evolved on eating raw meat and carrion. They can’t cope with preservatives, fillers, high fat or low grade protein, none of which occurs (at least in high proportions) in nature.

Once you have your dog on an all natural dog food, you’ll find fewer and fewer health problems. I’m sure you’d be as happy as anyone, to cut your dog’s professional health fees.

Raw Dog Food - How Can You Be Sure It’s Healthy?

Most people feel reassured by the pictures of smiling veterinarians and dog breeders paying tribute to the commercial pet food they feed their dog. Or perhaps, you’ve been convinced by your own vet that the food they sell is sure to be nutritionally balanced.

For your dog’s sake, be a bit suspicious. Don’t be convinced by anyone (including me) that what they are trying to sell you is necessarily in your dog’s best interest.

Instead, it may be in their own best interest if they gain a sale from convincing you.

If you’re having a problem getting your head around the idea of raw dog food, then I suggest it’s your problem, not your dog’s.

Dogs evolved on a diet of raw food over millennia. Humans have only recently taken an interest in making dog food.

Do you really imagine, for one moment, that humans have been able to change the domestic dog’s digestive and immune system in fifty odd years?

You may well say that humans have had an impact on the way dogs look, with all the different breeds. Yes, that’s true. But have you also noticed that pedigree dogs are also the most unhealthy? What I call a Heinz 57 dog, is normally much healthier.

So in breeding a selective type of dog, humans have gone against nature, by isolating one or more traits, until the breed becomes what the breeder wants.

And so it is with food. Humans tinker about with food, under the guise of ‘science’. I call it junk science, because there’s nothing scientific about commercial dog food. The word ‘science’ has come to be revered by the majority. Just as the word ‘natural’ is currently enjoying popularity.

So a clever commercial dog food manufacturer will incorporate the word ‘science’ and/or ‘natural’ in the advertising, to lure you in.

That doesn’t mean there’s anything of quality within the packet or can It could be anything. You have no way of knowing how the food was prepared or what is in each pack.

Raw dog food, on the other hand, contains all the nutrients essential to a healthy dog.

I appreciate that it may take you time to get your head around the idea, because you’ve probably been brought up on the idea that commercial pet food is the healthiest way to go.

If that was true, how cum that dogs health invariably improves when a switch from commercial to raw dog food is made? The only way you’re really going to find out for sure is to try it out yourself.

You may be worried about parasites and bacteria in raw dog food.

Neither of these are an issue for dogs, whose digestive system is very robust, with powerful digestive juices. Dogs aren’t carnivores, they’re omnivores, which means they can eat anything (as long as it’s raw), including vegetation and rotting carcasses.

In fact, you will notice that when you feed a raw dog food, fleas and worms decrease and almost disappear.

Dogs have problems with unnatural foods - those that are cooked, those that contain preservatives. Neither of these are natural. Cooking destroys many vitamins and denatures other nutrients.

I can genuinely assure you, that your dogs health will improve considerably when you start feeding a raw dog food. There may be a ‘de-toxing’ period initially, but this is normal, natural and only takes a short time to go through.

Why not try it for a month and see for yourself? What have you got to lose?