While most of us don’t think about what goes into pet food, we should. That’s because the ingredients in your dog’s food could cause illness and even death. We can’t trust manufacturers to take care of our pets, because there aren’t a lot of well enforced rules about the ingredients and processing for pet food.

Too Bad To Eat

Did you know that many different brands of dog food could contain unpleasant substances like hair, ligaments, organs, skin, nervous tissue, and meat from diseased animals? Or that spoiled meat and the bodies of euthanized zoo animals and pets could be used?

Most of even the good meat that ends up in dog and cat food is heavily processed, removing any nutritive value it once had. Ingredients like poultry broth, animal meal, and other nonspecific foods are unappealing and bad for our pets.

Animal meal is what’s left after a carcass has been processed to remove all the fat and meat. What remains is ground up and dried, resulting in a meal that has a similar texture to corn meal and included in pet food. Broths and similar substances in pet food are made of processed carcasses that come from many different kinds of animals, cooked until a liquid is produced.

It’s Legal!

Unfortunately, none of this is against the law. We’re used to fairly good rules about what can and can’t go into human food, and we’re used to those laws being reasonably well enforced. The regulations about what can be put into pet food are much looser, and may not be enforced at all.

That means that almost anything could end up in your dog’s food, and that the labels on the package that claim it’s “healthy and balanced” have little to no meaning. All that those words mean, in a legal sense, is that those foods contain a particular percentage of fat, protein, and added minerals and vitamins.

Toxic Additives

All of us have probably heard of the recent pet food recalls created by contaminated wheat gluten from China. However, melamine isn’t the only dangerous additive that can be found in pet food. There are a lot of preservatives that aren’t allowed in human food, and which cause illnesses like cancer, kidney failure, liver failure and more.

Not Just Cheap Foods

It’s not just cheap pet food that’s the problem, either. There’s no regulation on high end or organic foods, as well. While these pet food may be of higher quality, we have no way of knowing whether they use the same ingredients as their cheaper relatives or not. That can make it hard to find a food that’s good for your dog, even if it’s one recommended by your vet.

Your Options

There are a number of options. The first is to learn to read your dog’s food labels. Ingredients higher on the label are present in greater quantities, so look for named meats high on the list – not meals or broths, and not generic words like “poultry” “meat” or “fish”, but named species and types.

You should also learn which additives and preservatives are safe and which ones are dangerous. Avoid foods with too many grains, since they tend to be bad for your pet in the long run. You can also find a number of quality recipes out there to help you create nutritious diets for your dog. Just make sure you do something!