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The-Truth-About-Pet-Foods

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PREFACE<br />

<strong>The</strong>re is, of course, debate among pet food producers. Each believes,<br />

or at least must try to convince consumers to believe, that their product is<br />

best.<br />

<strong>The</strong> marketing and advertising resources of the 13 billion dollar pet<br />

food publicity machine can be persuasive. For the average consumer,<br />

sorting hype from substance can be very difficult. As a result, most people<br />

take the easy road and follow the most impressive glitz, the brands most<br />

predominant in the media (money makes this possible, not worth), or lore,<br />

myth, rumor and fad.<br />

Most pet food producers (in spite of promotion to the contrary) give<br />

secondary attention to nutrition (other than mandated by regulation) and<br />

have neither depth of scientific understanding nor logical health design.<br />

Primary effort is focused on chasing consumer trends. <strong>The</strong>y follow, not<br />

lead.<br />

<strong>The</strong> “100% complete” myth absolves producers from nutritional<br />

innovation. Why do more when you’re already perfect How much<br />

more intellectually honest it is to not pretend to have arrived at absolute<br />

truth. Nutrition is a process, not an end result. As research and discovery<br />

proceed, products should be advanced toward the goal of optimizing<br />

health. Products should be better today than they were a year ago, and<br />

better a year from now than today.<br />

But most pet foods are essentially the same, and remain the same,<br />

whether they are generic, premium, or “natural.” Differences are created<br />

by deliberate construction of marketing propaganda, not by what is in the<br />

package. This is not to say that formulas do not vary (mostly in unimportant<br />

ways), only that the philosophic approach to design and processing remains<br />

essentially the same.<br />

As I have explained, it is possible for anyone with some capital (no<br />

expertise necessary) to contract with any of dozens of pet food<br />

manufacturers to make a “new” food to market. “New” may be only the<br />

PAGE 162

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