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Is Pet Food Actually Poisoning Our Pets -Says the Mail

It's an interesting article even though I do take exception to some of the points in it. I live in Canada and have never seen "Mammalian meat meal" on any bag of dog food here. In some grocery store brand I suppose you might see "meat meal" but I think in this day and age most consumers are insisting on specified meats and meals. I work for a small pet food company here and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt where our meats and meals come from and there is no roadkill or ill animals. In fact - in a rather disgusting anecdote - about a year or so ago our fresh chicken source was drying up - the reason? McDonalds was buying up all available chicken for their new nuggets. I suppose that it should have made me feel good that we really do use human grade meat but I'll never look at a chicken nugget the same way again.

I have done a brief trial of my guys on raw and Rylie's stomach simply couldn't handle it. It's taken me all summer to get him back to 100% so I'll likely not try it again with him ever. On reflection, I think he may not tolerate beef at all and certainly not the high fat content of the bone I gave him.

The reason I wanted to try raw was to get a bit of weight off of Max. I was giving him just a tiny bit of kibble and couldn't fathom reducing it even more so I wanted to be able to feed more volume. He seemed to do fine on it but I just could not seem to get it well balanced and I was very fearful of him having a deficiency that didn't show up until it was too late to do anything about. Added to that I really don't like to deal with raw meat even cooking for myself - I try not to touch it.

For Max and his weight loss I settled on giving him a morning meal based on cooked beef diet that to the best of my knowledge was balanced within the NRC guidelines. It worked for the weight loss and it made me feel better because I could give him what seemed to be a decent amount.

I actually do believe that dogs are living longer because of better care - including the commercially prepared food that is well balanced. I think that it is balanced for the "average" dog though and certainly it's better if we could formulate a diet for our individual dog's needs. Currently, I'm feeding both of mine 1/2 of a commercial high quality food and 1/2 cooked chicken based meal. I am keeping the kibble in for their teeth as they can't have bones and because although the vitamin/grain premix I use for the muffins claims to be balanced I'm a little leery because it also says you can use any protein source and from my own forays into balancing a diet I know the protein source is a huge driver to whatever else you need. I will say that Rylie's coat looks 100% better since I have been able to wean him off of the gastro food. I didn't like the gastro food - it was very low fat and protein for a dog as active as him but it was the only thing his stomach was able to tolerate this summer so I thought I'd rather have a healthy dog with a dull coat than the alternative.
 
Brilliant article & I fully agree that an awfull lot of dog food really should be taken off the market as it isnt really suitable for what it is inteneded for!

After working with dogs for 10 years + I have seen the damage some foods have done. Including cancers, rotten teeth, poor condition.......... My most 'favourite' toxic food (I wont mention the name for obvious reasons!!) comes in yellow packaging & is avalible in supermarkets, years ago I did a nutrition course & found out what was really in that food which prompted me to feed my own dogs only on raw or homecooked foods. Of course this was years ago & things have gotten better (& worse!) & there are some really good dry & wet diets avalible as well as lots of raw & homecooked foods - so things should be getting better - but people dont allways look at what is better for their dogs & worry more how much it costs (my husband would be included here!!).
 
My mum works in a factory which makes the "yellow packaging" dog food, and from what she has told me, its absolute RUBBISH that they shove in it, yet I still feed Murphy it :confused::confused:
 
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