Veterinarian Holistic Medicine Archives

Our pet food is juat a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

Friends,

Our (human) food standards may not be so bad with rotten and damaged food but it is MORE refined and LESS consideration is taken as to whether it is actually nutritious or not.

It has been less than 25 years since the official stance of the AMA was that nutrition had nothing to DO with health.

Comments?

Walt

I thought this might be of interest... But those with a weak
stomach should consider this fair warning!
Be Well,
Misty L. Trepke
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

You think your food is contaminated. Consider what we feed our animal
companions.

POLLUTED PET FOOD

Commercial pet food and stock feed contain a cocktail of dead
domestic animals and deadly environmental toxins.

NOTICE

-All Animals Are To Be Destroyed In A Humane Manner and No
Processing Is To Begin Until The Animal Has Expired.
-The Management
[Sign on the wall of a rendering plant]

Warning: these four short articles will make you rethink what you
feed to your pets, and even what you and your family eat.

Extracted from NEXUS Magazine, Volume 4, #1 (Dec '96 - Jan 1997).
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

Reprinted with permission from
Earth Island Journal
(vol. 11, no. 3, Summer 1996)
(vol. 5, no. 4, Fall 1990)
300 Broadway, Suite 28
San Francisco, CA 94133, USA
Phone: +1 (415) 788 3666
Fax: +1 (415) 788 7324
E-mail: earthisland@igc.apc.org
Web page: http://www.earthisland.org/ei/

1. THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

by Ann Martin

The pet food industry, a billion-dollar, unregulated operation,
feeds on the garbage that otherwise would wind up in landfills or be
transformed into fertiliser. The hidden ingredients in a can of
commercial pet food may include roadkill and the rendered remains of
cats and dogs. The pet food industry claims that its products
constitute a "complete and balanced diet" but, in reality,
commercial pet food is unfit for human or animal consumption.

"Vegetable protein", the mainstay of dry dog foods, includes ground
yellow corn, wheat shorts and middlings, soybean meal, rice husks,
peanut meal and peanut shells (identified as "cellulose" on pet food
labels). These often are little more than the sweepings from milling
room floors. Stripped of their oil, germ and bran, these "proteins"
are deficient in essential fatty acids, fat-soluble vitamins and
antioxidants. "Animal protein" in commercial pet foods can include
diseased meat, roadkill, contaminated material from slaughterhouses,
faecal matter, rendered cats and dogs and poultry feathers.
The major source of animal protein comes from dead-stock removal
operations that supply so-called "4-D" animals&emdash;dead,
diseased, dying or disabled&emdash;to "receiving plants" for hide,
fat and meat removal. The meat (after being doused with charcoal and
marked "unfit for human consumption") may then be sold for pet food.

Rendering plants process decomposing animal carcasses, large
roadkill and euthanised dogs and cats into a dry protein product
that is sold to the pet food industry. One small plant in Quebec,
Ontario, renders 10 tons (22,000 pounds) of dogs and cats per week.
The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture states that "the fur is not
removed from dogs and cats" and that "dead animals are cooked
together with viscera, bones and fat at 115° C (235° F) for 20
minutes".

The US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine
(CVM)is aware of the use of rendered dogs and cats in pet foods, but
has stated: "CVM has not acted to specifically prohibit the
rendering of pets. However, that is not to say that the practise of
using this material in pet food is condoned by the CVM."

In both the US and Canada, the pet food industry is virtually
self-regulated. In the US, the Association of American Feed Control
Officials (AAFCO) sets guidelines and definitions for animal feed,
including pet foods. In Canada, the most prominent control is
the "Labeling Act", simply requiring product labels to state the
name and address of the manufacturer, the weight of the product and
whether it is dog or cat food. The Canadian Veterinary Medical
Association (CVMA) and the Pet Food Association of Canada (PFAC) are
voluntary organisations that, for the most part, rely on the
integrity of the companies they certify to assure that product
ingredients do not fall below minimum standards.

The majority&emdash;85 to 90 per cent&emdash;of the pet food sold in
Canada is manufactured by US-based multinationals. Under the terms
of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement, neither the CVMA nor PFAC
exercises any control over the ingredients in cans of US pet food.

Pet food industry advertising promotes the idea that, to keep pets
healthy, one must feed them commercially formulated pet foods. But
such a diet contributes to cancer, skin problems, allergies,
hypertension, kidney and liver failure, heart disease and dental
problems. One more item should be added to pet food labels: a skull-
and-crossbones insignia! (Ann Martin is an animal rights activist
and leading critic of the commercial pet food industry. She lives in
London, Ontario, Canada.)

2. FOOD NOT FIT FOR A PET

by Dr Wendell O. Belfield, D.V.M.

The most frequently asked question in my practice is, "Which
commercial pet food do you recommend?" My standard answer is "None."
I am certain that pet-owners notice changes in their animals after
using different batches of the same brand of pet food. Their pets
may have diarrhoea, increased flatulence, a dull hair coat,
intermittent vomiting or prolonged scratching. These are common
symptoms associated with commercial pet foods.

In 1981, as Martin Zucker and I wrote How to Have a Healthier Dog, we
discovered the full extent of negative effects that commercial pet
food has on animals. In February 1990, San Francisco Chronicle staff
writer John Eckhouse went even further with an exposé entitled "How
Dogs and Cats Get Recycled into Pet Food".

Eckhouse wrote: "Each year, millions of dead American dogs and cats
are processed along with billions of pounds of other animal
materials by companies known as renderers. The finished product...
tallow and meat meal...serve as raw materials for thousands of items
that include cosmetics and pet food."

Pet food company executives made the usual denials. But federal and
state agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, and
medical groups, such as the American Veterinary Medical Association
and the California Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), confirm
that pets, on a routine basis, are rendered after they die in animal
shelters or are disposed of by health authorities&emdash;and the end
product frequently finds its way into pet food.

Government health officials, scientists and pet food executives
argue that such open criticism of commercial pet food is unfounded.
James Morris, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at
Davis, California, has said, "Any products not fit for human
consumption are very well sterilised, so nothing can be transmitted
to the animal." Individuals who make such statements know nothing of
the meat and rendering business.

For seven years I was a veterinary meat inspector for the US
Department of Agriculture and the State of California. I waded
through blood, water, pus and faecal material, inhaled the fetid
stench from the killing floor and listened to the death cries of
slaughtered animals.

Prior to World War II, most slaughterhouses were all-inclusive; that
is, livestock was slaughtered and processed in one location. There
was a section for smoking meats, a section for processing meats into
sausages, and a section for rendering. After World War II, the meat
industry became more specialised. A slaughterhouse dressed the
carcasses, while a separate facility made the sausages. The
rendering of slaughter waste also became a separate
speciality&emdash;no longer within the jurisdiction of federal
meat inspectors and out of the public eye.

To prevent condemned meat from being rerouted and used for human
consumption, government regulations require that meat be "denatured"
before removal from the slaughterhouse and shipment to rendering
facilities. In my time as a veterinary meat inspector, we denatured
with carbolic acid (a potentially corrosive disinfectant) and/or
creosote (used for wood-preservation or as a disinfectant). Both
substances are highly toxic. According to federal meat inspection
regulations, fuel oil, kerosene, crude carbolic acid and citronella
(an insect repellent made from lemon grass) are all approved
denaturing materials.

Condemned livestock carcasses treated with these chemicals can
become meat and bone meal for the pet food industry. Because
rendering facilities are not government-controlled, any animal
carcasses can be rendered&emdash;even dogs and cats. As Eileen Layne
of the CVMA told the Chronicle, "When you read pet food labels, and
it says "meat and bone meal", that's what it is: cooked and
converted animals, including some dogs and cats."

Some of these dead pets&emdash;those euthanised by
veterinarians&emdash;already contain pentobarbital before treatment
with the denaturing process. According to University of Minnesota
researchers, the sodium pentobarbital used to euthanise
pets "survives rendering without undergoing degradation". Fat
stabilisers are introduced into the finished rendered product to
prevent rancidity. Common chemical stabilisers include BHA
(butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene)
&emdash;both known to cause liver and kidney dysfunction&emdash;and
ethoxyquin, a suspected carcinogen. Many semi-moist dog foods
contain propylene glycol&emdash;first cousin to the anti-freeze
agent, ethylene glycol, that destroys red blood-cells. Lead
frequently shows up in pet foods, even those made from livestock
meat and bone meal. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study,
titled "Lead in Animal Foods", found that a nine-pound cat fed on
commercial pet food ingests more lead than the amount considered
potentially toxic for children.

I have been practising small-animal medicine for more than 25 years.
Every day I see the casualties of pet industry propaganda. But the
professors in the teaching institutions of veterinary medicine
generally support an industry that has little regard for the
quality of health in our companion animals.

One last word of caution: meat and bone meal from sources not fit
for human consumption have found their way into poultry feed. This
means that animal products rendered under questionable conditions
are fed to birds that may wind up on your table. Remember this when
you are eating your next piece of chicken or turkey.

(Dr Belfield is a graduate of Tuskegee Institute of Veterinary
Medicine and is now in private practice in San Jose, California. Dr
Belfield established the first orthomolecular veterinary hospital in
the US. He is co-author of The Very Healthy Cat Book and How to Have
a Healthier Dog. This article first appeared in Let's Live Magazine,
May 1992.)

3. A LOOK INSIDE A RENDERING PLANT

by Gar Smith

Rendering has been called "the silent industry". Each year in the
US, 286 rendering plants quietly dispose of more than 12.5 million
tons of dead animals, fat and meat wastes. As the public relations
watchdog newsletter PR Watch observes, renderers "are thankful that
most people remain blissfully unaware of their existence".

When City Paper reporter Van Smith visited Baltimore's Valley
Proteins rendering plant last summer, he found that the "hoggers"
(the large vats used to grind and filter animal tissues prior to
deep-fat-frying) held an eclectic mix of body parts ranging
from "dead dogs, cats, raccoons, possums, deer, foxes [and] snakes"
to a "baby circus elephant" and the remains of Bozeman, a Police
Department quarterhorse that "died in the line of duty".

In an average month, Baltimore's pound hands over 1,824 dead animals
to Valley Proteins. Last year, the plant transformed 150 millions
pounds of decaying flesh and kitchen grease into 80 million pounds
of commercial meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease. Thirty
years ago, most of the renderer's wastes came from small markets and
slaughterhouses. Today, thanks to the proliferation of fast-food
restaurants, nearly half the raw material is kitchen grease and
frying oil. Recycling dead pets and wildlife into animal food is "a
very small part of the business that we don't like to advertise,"
Valley Proteins' President, J. J. Smith, told City Paper. The plant
processes these animals as a "public service, not for profit," Smith
said, since "there is not a lot of protein and fat [on pets]...,
just a lot of hair you have to deal with somehow."

According to City Paper, Valley Proteins "sells inedible animal
parts and rendered material to Alpo, Heinz and Ralston-Purina".
Valley Proteins insists that it does not sell "dead pet by-products"
to pet food firms since "they are all very sensitive to the recycled
pet potential". Valley Proteins maintains two production
lines&emdash;one for clean meat and bones and a second line for dead
pets and wildlife. However, Van Smith reported, "the protein
material is a mix from both production lines. Thus the meat and
bone meal made at the plant includes materials from pets and
wildlife, and about five per cent of that product goes to dry-pet-
food manufacturers..."

A 1991 USDA report states that "approximately 7.9 billion pounds of
meat and bone meal, blood meal and feather meal [were] produced in
1983". Of that amount, 34 per cent was used in pet food, 34 per cent
in poultry feed, 20 per cent in pig food and 10 per cent in beef and
dairy cattle feed.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) carried in pig- and
chicken-laden foods may eventually eclipse the threat of "mad cow
disease". The risk of household pet exposure to TSE from
contaminated pet food is more than three times greater than the risk
for hamburger-eating humans.

(Gar Smith is Editor of Earth Island Journal.)

4. THE DARK SIDE OF RECYCLING

[Author's name withheld]

[In February 1990, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a macabre
two-part story detailing how stray dogs, cats and pound animals are
routinely rounded up by meat renderers and ground up into&emdash;of
all things&emdash;pet food. According to the researcher who brought
the information to the Chronicle, the paper buried the story and
deleted many of the charges he had documented. A report he worked on
for ABC television's 20-20 was similarly watered down. In
exasperation, he sent the story to Earth Island Journal.
NEXUS has been asked to withhold the name of the author/researcher,
who has been forced to flee San Francisco with his wife and go into
hiding as a result of the threats made against his well-being. Ed.]

The rendering plant floor is piled high with "raw product":
thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle,
sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons&emdash;all
waiting to be processed. In the 90-degree heat, the piles of dead
animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots
swarm over the carcasses.

Two bandana-masked men begin operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading
the "raw" into a 10-foot- deep stainless-steel pit. They are
undocumented workers from Mexico, doing a dirty job. A giant auger-
grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping bones and
squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never forget.

Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the
moisture and fat. The rendering plant works like a giant kitchen. The
cooker, or "chef", blends the raw product in order to maintain a
certain ratio between the carcasses of pets, livestock, poultry
waste and supermarket rejects.

Once the mass is cut into small pieces, it is transported to another
auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one
hour. The continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop, 24
hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from bones in
the hot 'soup'. During this cooking process, the 'soup' produces a
fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed
off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which
squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverises the product into
a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone
chips. Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow
grease, meat and bone meal.

A Meaty Menu

As the American Journal of Veterinary Research explains, this
recycled meat and bone meal is used as "a source of protein and
other nutrients in the diets of poultry and swine and in pet foods,
with lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle and sheep. Animal fat
is also used in animal feeds as an energy source." Every day,
hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions
of tons of this "food enhancer" to poultry ranches, cattle feed-
lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food
manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the
billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.

Rendering plants have different specialities. The labelling
designation of a particular "run" of product is defined by the
predominance of a specific animal. Some product-label names are:
meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products,
fish meal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken
fat.

Rendering plants perform one of the most valuable functions on
Earth: they recycle used animals. Without rendering, our cities
would run the risk of becoming filled with diseased and rotting
carcasses. Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread uncontrolled
through the population.

The Dark Side

Death is the number one commodity in a business where the demand for
feed ingredients far exceeds the supply of raw product. But this
elaborate system of food production through waste management has
evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering plants are unavoidably
processing toxic waste.

The dead animals (the "raw") are accompanied by a whole menu of
unwanted ingredients. Pesticides enter the rendering process via
poisoned livestock, and fish oil laced with bootleg DDT and other
organophosphates that have accumulated in the bodies of West Coast
mackerel and tuna.

Because animals are frequently shoved into the pit with flea collars
still attached, organophosphate-containing insecticides get into the
mix as well. The insecticide Dursban arrives in the form of cattle
insecticide patches. Pharmaceuticals leak from antibiotics in
livestock, and euthanasia drugs given to pets are also included.
Heavy metals accumulate from a variety of sources: pet ID tags,
surgical pins and needles.

Even plastic winds up going into the pit. Unsold supermarket meats,
chicken and fish arrive in styrofoam trays and shrink wrap. No one
has time for the tedious chore of unwrapping thousands of rejected
meat-packs. More plastic is added to the pits with the arrival of
cattle ID tags, plastic insecticide patches and the green plastic
bags containing pets from veterinarians.

Rendering Judgements

Skyrocketing labour costs are one of the economic factors forcing the
corporate flesh-peddlers to cheat. It is far too costly for plant
personnel to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled T-bone steaks.
Every week, millions of packages of plastic-wrapped meat go through
the rendering process and become one of the unwanted ingredients in
animal feed.

The most environmentally conscious state in the nation is
California, where spot checks and testing of animal-feed ingredients
happen at the wobbly rate of once every two-and-a-half months. The
supervising state agency is the Department of Agriculture's Feed and
Fertilizer Division of Compliance. Its main objective is to test
for truth in labelling: does the percentage of protein, phosphorous
and calcium match the rendering plant's claims; do the percentages
meet state requirements? However, testing for pesticides and
other toxins in animal feeds is incomplete.

In California, eight field inspectors regulate a rendering industry
that feeds the animals that the state's 30 million people eat. When
it comes to rendering plants, however, state and federal agencies
have maintained a hands-off policy, allowing the industry to become
largely self-regulating. An article in the February 1990 issue of
Render, the industry's national magazine, suggests that the self-
regulation of certain contamination problems is not working.

One policing program that is already off to a shaky start is the
Salmonella Education/Reduction Program, formed under the auspices of
the National Renderers Association. The magazine states
that "...unless US and Canadian renderers get their heads out of the
ground and demonstrate that they are serious about reducing the
incidence of salmonella contamination in their animal protein meals,
they are going to be faced with...new and overly stringent
government regulations." So far, the voluntary self-testing program
is not working. According to the magazine, "...only about 20 per
cent of the total number of companies producing or blending animal
protein meal have signed up for the program..." Far fewer have done
the actual testing.

The American Journal of Veterinary Research conducted an
investigation into the persistence of sodium phenobarbital in the
carcasses of euthanised animals at a typical rendering plant in 1985
and found "...virtually no degradation of the drug occurred during
this conventional rendering process©" and that "...the potential of
other chemical contaminants (e.g., heavy metals, pesticides and
environmental toxicants, which may cause massive herd mortalities)
to degrade during conventional rendering needs further evaluation."

Renderers are the silent partners in our food chain. But worried
insiders are beginning to talk, and one word that continues to come
up in conversation is "pesticides". The possibility of
petrochemically poisoning our food has become a reality. Government
agencies and the industry itself are allowing toxins to be
inadvertently recycled from the streets and supermarket shelves into
the food chain. As we break into a new decade of increasingly
complex pollution problems, we must rethink our place in the
environment. No longer hunters, we are becoming the victims of our
technologically altered food chain.

The possibility of petrochemically poisoning our food has become a
reality. (First published in Earth Island Journal, Fall 1990.)

X

Re: Our pet food is juat a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

Re: Our pet food is juat a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

sorry I provided the wrong link for the dog food

Re: Our pet food is juat a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

Re: Our pet food is a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

Re: sorry I provided the wrong link for the dog food (Archive.)

Re: Our pet food is juat a cut above human food standards. (Archive in veterinarian

That's why my guys get people food!!!

Re: Does anyone know where i can find this?

Re: Does anyone know where i can find this?