By Kathy Coffey
Recipes for homemade dog foods are popping up all over. More and more pet owners are deciding to make their own homemade dog foods. The pet food recall list is growing by the week. The food that you are feeding your beloved dog that is safe today, may not be tomorrow. Pet owners are in a panic trying to keep their best friend safe…and rightfully so.
The Secrets of the Pet Food industry are coming to light.
Chinese suppliers of animal feed have admitted that for years they have been spiking shipments to pet food companies in the US to make it appear as though the food was a high protein quality product. Before Melamine, there was Urea, another Nitrogen-based chemical that was used until it started making animals sick, then it was quitely discontinued.
Guarding against contaminated products being imported has become quite a problem. According to the Commerce Department, the pet food industry now imports 7 times the amount of animal feed it did in 2000. Wheat gluten and rice protein come in the form of a powder and chemicals like melamine can easily be mixed in (whether intentional or unintentional) and not be detected by the FDA because they are not on its battery of tests.
The FDA oversees a tillion dollars worth of products annually, this includes about half of all imports. The agency regulates about 25% of every dollar that is spent by American consumers annually, so it is impossible for the agency to inspect more than a fraction of all imports. About 99% of all food imports are not inspected.
This massive pet food recall has not only brought to light safety issues with our dog food supply but also quality issues. Little was known about Wheat gluten and rice protein until the recent pet food recall. Now they are everyday words. People have been researching to find out just what they are…and the results are eye-opening.
The chunky bits that we thought were meat in our beloved dog’s food we find out are actually wheat gluten, a totally meatless product. Rice Protein is another meatless additive to increase the protein levels in the pet foods. Which leads us to ask just how much meat are our carnivores getting.
A healthy dog’s diet consists of 40% meat, 30% protein and 30% starch. It appears that the majority of the pet food products on the market today consist mostly of cheap cereal fillers. Even many of the so called “premium brands” were not immune from the pet food recalls as they also contained wheat gluten and rice protein.
The meat-by-products that are used in these commercial recipes are animal scraps that the FDA has deemed “unfit for human consumption” these include heads, feet, intestines, lungs, spleens, ligaments, and other scary parts. Even when the recipe consists of meat, for the most part, it is scrap meat like backs and necks.
Several companies that got its pet food from one of the manufacturers have said that the rice protein that was included in the recipes for their dog food was without their knowledge or consent (the manufacturer has denied this). How do we know who's telling the truth? Many of us were under the assumption that all of the ingredients for the recipe had to be listed on the package. What else are in the commercial dog food recipes that we don’t know about?
Lawmakers are hurrying to change things but everyone knows that takes time. So in the mean time what should you do? The choice is one that every one of us is going to have to make. You can take your chances; you can turn to an even higher priced organic or natural pet food; or you can turn to your own kitchen and use recipes for homemade cat and dog foods. After all, how difficult can it be to feed your pet a well balance diet? We manage to do it for our children everyday.
For more information on the pet food recall: http://petfoodrecall-dogs.blogspot.com/ For more information and other interesting ebooks: http://pipelinebooks.com/
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