Recently, my boyfriend took one of our cats to the vet, and he came home with a new brand of food to try. When I took a look at the can, I was shocked at what I saw listed as ingredients: water, meat by-products, chicken by-products, and a lengthy list of unpronounceable chemicals. There was no way we were going to feed this to our pets, even though it was an expensive, vet-recommended brand of food. I love my pets, and I want the best, most nutritious diet for them, which makes me reluctant to feed them anything that includes “by-products.” Pet food packaging claims to be full of healthy things like meats, grains, and fruits, so why does looking at the ingredients on a can of food feel like reading a chemistry textbook?
The Stomach-Churning Truth
Pet food is a multi-billion dollar industry, dominated by a few multinational conglomerates that own most of the brands on store shelves. Nestle, Del Monte, and MasterFoods make human food too, and that’s part of what allows them to make pet food so cheaply. In processing meat for human consumption, there are a lot of leftover parts that people don’t eat. All those leftovers and remnants of cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and sheep—that’s what goes into pet food.
Using real meat would be too expensive, so pet food contains cheaper “by-products” and other meat “derivatives.” The Association of American Feed Control Officials, which represents pet food manufacturers, defines by-products as “the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleens, kidneys, brains, livers, blood, bones, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents.” Pet foods also utilize ground-up and rendered “meal” derived from by-products like hooves, heads, feet, offal, eggs, and feathers. The meal powder is added as a protein booster, although it’s often low quality and less digestible than real meat. They use any animals or parts that can’t be sold to humans, including animals that are dead, dying, diseased, or disabled. The industry has had to fend off accusations that it utilizes road kill and euthanized companion animals— allegations it roundly denies—even though using such animals for pet food is not illegal.
One problem with manufacturing pet food is that high cooking temperatures usually destroy most of the most nutritious elements, so the manufacturers add various chemicals and nutrients back in to the kibble to make it seem healthier. They also add binders and fillers like corn or rice, which add texture and provide cheap calories. Finally, the kibble is sprayed with rendered animal fat, which is the only way to make the food palatable enough for pets to want to eat.
Cheap Ingredients and False Promises
Using slaughtered animal by-products opens pet food up to many kinds of contamination. Many rendered animals are infected with bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli, and those bacteria can end up in the food. Some commercial pet foods have tested positive for medications such as penicillin or pentobarbital, which can withstand the cooking process. Pet food can also be contaminated with fungi, chemical residues, and other toxins at many points in the manufacturing process. Even if the food is free from pathogens, it still isn’t always healthy for pets. Low-quality processed diets can lead to urinary tract problems, dental problems, obesity, nutritional deficiency, hyperthyroidism, digestive problems, and renal failure.
Pet food isn’t well regulated by the government. Individual states have the power to test the food to make sure it lives up to its nutritional promises, but some do and some don’t, so it can be hard to know whether any food really provides the correct nutrition. Another problem with pet food is that it can be hard to tell exactly who is manufacturing the product. The industry uses large companies that produce and package foods under several different names. This was the problem that caused the massive pet food recall of 2007—a tainted ingredient used by one of these large food packers ended up spoiling dozens of different brands, because they were all made out of the same ingredients on the same equipment.
