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What
Happened to the Nutrients?
Dr. Randy L. Wysong is a veterinarian and produces his own line of pet
foods. A long time critic of pet food industry practices, he said, "Processing
is the wild card in nutritional value that is, by and large, simply ignored.
Heating, cooking, rendering, freezing, dehydrating, canning, extruding,
pelleting, baking, and so forth, are so commonplace that they are simply
thought of as synonymous with food itself."9 Processing meat and
by-products used in pet food can greatly diminish their nutritional value,
but cooking increases the digestibility of cereal grains.
To make pet
food nutritious, pet food manufacturers must "fortify" it with
vitamins and minerals. Why? Because the ingredients they are using are
not wholesome, their quality may be extremely variable, and the harsh
manufacturing practices destroy many of the nutrients the food had to
begin with.
Contaminants
Commercially manufactured or rendered meat meals and by-product meals
are frequently highly contaminated with bacteria because their source
is not always slaughtered animals. Animals that have died because of disease,
injury, or natural causes are a source of meat for meat meal. The dead
animal might not be rendered until days after its death. Therefore the
carcass is often contaminated with bacteria such as Salmonella and Escherichia
coli. Dangerous E. Coli bacteria are estimated to contaminate more than
50% of meat meals. While the cooking process may kill bacteria, it does
not eliminate the endotoxins some bacteria produce during their growth
and are released when they die. These toxins can cause sickness and disease.
Pet food manufacturers do not test their products for endotoxins.10
Mycotoxins
-- These toxins comes from mold or fungi, such as vomitoxin in the Nature's
Recipe case, and aflatoxin in Doane's food. Poor farming practices and
improper drying and storage of crops can cause mold growth. Ingredients
that are most likely to be contaminated with mycotoxins are grains such
as wheat and corn, cottonseed meal, peanut meal, and fish meal.
Labeling
The National Research Council (NRC) of the Academy of Sciences set the
nutritional standards for pet food until 1974, when the pet food industry
created a group called the Association of American Feed Control Officials
(AAFCO). At that time AAFCO chose to adopt the NRC standards rather than
develop its own. The NRC standards required feeding trials for pet foods
that claimed to be "complete" and "balanced." The
pet food industry found the feeding trials too restrictive and expensive,
so AAFCO designed an alternate procedure for claiming the nutritional
adequacy of pet food. AAFCO also formed "expert committees"
for canine and feline nutrition and developed its own standards in the
early 1990s. Instead of feeding trials, chemical analysis will determine
if a food meets the standards.
The problem
with chemical analysis is that it does not address the palatability, digestibility,
and biological availability of nutrients in pet food. Thus it is unreliable
for determining whether a food will provide an animal with sufficient
nutrients.
To compensate
for the limitations of chemical analysis, AAFCO added a "safety factor,"
which was to exceed the minimum amount of nutrients required to meet the
complete and balanced requirements.
The digestibility
and availability of nutrients is not listed on pet food labels
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