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Most pet foods are made from such low
grade food sources and meat meals that
additional vitamins and minerals (and
sometimes proteins) must be added in
order to make it appear nutritious in the
guaranteed analysis. These added ‘nutrients’
are virtually all synthetic and made
in large batches in chemical factories offshore.
Even if the premix is ‘sourced’ in
the US, most of the vitamins that make
up the premix are actually manufactured
only in China or India.
So if the foreign manufacturer adds too
much of one chemical to the premix, or
adds something else like melamine to
get better numbers, or if the pet food
company here in North America adds
too many scoops of premix to the dog
food recipe, the result can be disastrous.
But it likely won’t be discovered until an
animal gets sick because, until recently,
there was no legal requirement for pet
foods to be tested for such toxins before
they went to market.
One of the more persistent recall issues
in North America is not related to chemical
inputs but to the use of low quality
ingredients in pet food. For example,
feed grade corn and wheat left in toomoist
conditions for too long can grow
high levels of aflatoxin, a type of naturally
occurring mycotoxin produced by numerous
species of aspergillus. This toxin
is harmful to people and pets, though
humans have a higher tolerance for it
and rarely get sick from exposure. Aflatoxin
spores can easily colonize in grain
both before harvest and during storage
with prolonged exposure to a hot, moist
environment. It survives in the milk of
animals fed contaminated feed, and is so
common that it’s present in commercial
peanut butter in doses too low to make
anyone sick. In pets however, continuous
exposure to aflatoxin causes liver
damage which shows up in the animal as
swelling, bleeding, mental confusion, GI
distress, and sometimes coma.
The spores of aspergillus are present in
most susceptible crops at the time of harvest,
raising the risk of harmful amounts
of aflatoxin if cool and dry storage standards
are not met. These standards are
generally well followed with grains destined
for the human market (grocery
stores and restaurants) because there
are more laws in place requiring testing
of these goods. Not so for foodstuffs
destined for animal feed. Larger pet food
manufacturers buy their ingredients
from both the human and pet streams
and then mix them. Just one spore can
spread to huge amounts of finished product
very quickly, thus we get these massive
pet food recalls spread out over several
states or even whole countries.
Frozen raw and dehydrated pet food
products as an alternative to the above
are not free of toxin risk either. This segment
of the pet food market is the fastest
growing as more consumers embrace
alternatives to chemical-laden, high-heat
extruded, low-quality ingredient foods.
However, several recent pet food recalls
have been initiated due to unacceptable
concentrations of dangerous pathogenic
organisms found in uncooked meat ingredients.
Depending on the packing and shipping
procedures, both in the factory and at
the store level, pathogens have the opportunity
to thrive on raw foods if thawing
takes place along the way. Once refrozen,
the consumer has no way of knowing
if thawing has happened. In the case of
dehydrated meat products, the moisture
must be extremely low, and remain low
(no storage in damp warehouses or boxes)
or pathogens again have the opportunity
to flourish.
Interestingly, the Food & Drug Administration
(FDA) in the US is going after this
group of manufacturers now to prevent
further outbreaks of pathogens in raw
food, especially salmonella and E. coli.
Very soon, all manufacturers of these
products will be required to ultra-pasteurize
their products, which kills not
only the pathogens but also any live enzymes
in the food, defeating much of the
purpose for feeding it in the first place.
Salmonella and E. coli contaminations are
not confined to raw foods, but also affect
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10 May/June 2012 | Dogs Naturally Magazine