How Good Is The Food Your Dog Is Getting?
Admin: Kenn Bell
Categories: Dog Safety, Health & Science News, News
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Your Dog deserves the best food and today more than ever before dog health food is becoming a vital part of keeping your pet healthy. We’ve all seen the news report about contaminated batches of dog food causing sickness and even death. I know I always wonder where the next batch is going to land and if my best friend is going to suffer from it.
As more and more dog food companies look for ways to cut costs, they’re starting to source their ingredients wherever it’s cheapest. This isn’t going to always be the best thing for your dog though.
A couple of years ago there was a very widespread recall of dog food after it was found that there was melamine (a type of plastic) in some of the ingredients. After some work it was found that imported cereal proteins (which have little nutritional value in the first place) which was the culprit. But really what this means is that it doesn’t matter what the standards are in the US based production if the ingredients they are using are already tainted.
Although this happened a couple of years ago, I wonder what has changed to make sure that it can’t happen again. Considering there was melamine found in milk powder produced under much stricter human food standards recently, I don’t have much confidence that it isn’t going to happen again. I know that I don’t want to be one of the unlucky dog owners who’s left to pick up the pieces next time there’s a mix up on the production line.
Aside from these sort of accidental tainting of dog food, what else gets put into your Dog’s food? Often a toxic preservative called ethoxyquin is added but won’t appear on the list of ingredients because it is added before the production process. Usually this additive is found in fish meal, so if it’s in your dog food, I’d be thinking very seriously about changing foods. Ethoxyquin has been linked to side effects from severe allergic reactions and skin problems to cancer and liver failure.
Often fish protein is promoted as being a healthy ingredient for you dog, and it’s true that there are other vital nutrients in fish, but that doesn’t outweigh having a potential carcinogen in your dog food. There’s other ways to get those nutrients that are going to be a lot safer for your dog.
And then there’s the grain fillers that are often used to bulk out dog food. These fillers, things like corn and rice protein, have very little nutritional value for dogs. Most of the time it’s just a way to use leftover products from human food and has little to do with nourishment for your dog.
This should make you start thinking about what you’re really feeding your Dog. Dog health food and especially home made food is one of the easiest ways to make sure that there is no harmful additives going into your dog’s meal.
