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The following information is taken in part from: "The Nature of Animal Healing" By Martin Goldstein, DVM.
This veterinarian's book has horrifying information about what is in some brands of pet food. These are the big named brands that are carried at grocery and discount stores.
According to AAFCO, pet food "meat" can be derived from any skeletal muscle of any slaughtered animal. It can be tongue, diaphragm, heart as well as fat or skin.
If your pet food lists poultry by products it is not chicken meat but the left overs of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, viscera, feathers, internal organs such as heart, lungs, thorax and abdomen. Look at your pet food and see if it specifies what kind of meat it is and if it just says chicken by-products or chicken meal it is probably these parts. The real meat is too valuable and goes only for human consumption.
Some commercial brands of pet food list meat or fish and we are led to believe that they mean decent cuts of meat, but that is also too valuable and goes mostly for human consumption. Only the heads feet and organs etc go to the pet food companies and rendering plants and that's the best part that's in the food.
Fish parts are at least free of hormones, drugs and disease but they contain high levels of mercury, which if eaten every day cause health problems.
The hormones and antibiotics that livestock are given are not completely flushed out of the system before they die. Pets that eat hormone fattened meat are at a health risk because that is the only food they eat every day. Humans at least eat a varied diet and eat only the choice cuts. Canned food is sometimes the worst because it's mostly water and many types are rendered meat.
Don't stop reading now; the worst is yet to come:
In Dr Goldstein's book he mentions a woman named Ann Martin who wrote a book called "Food Pets Die For." She did some research into the rendering plants that sell meat to pet food companies. It seems that rendering is boiling animal substances discarded by slaughter houses that are unfit for human consumption. This rendered meat goes directly into pet and livestock food. These animals were dead, diseased, disabled and or drugged and can have tumors, cancer and worms. Basically anything can go into the pot. Rendering plants accept road kill, dead zoo animals and euthanized pets from animal shelters and veterinary clinics. She sent a questionnaire to every state in the US and Canada asking if they allow euthanized pets to be rendered and if that is used for pet and livestock food. Twenty states replied that no law forbids it. The thirty other states did not reply, suggesting that their laws are just as lax.
Most pets are euthanized with sodium pentobarbital which medical authorities acknowledge may be dangerous or deadly even if absorbed indirectly after some days or weeks by healthy dogs or cats.
Martin found that a rendering plant in Quebec was rendering 11 tons of dogs and cats per week! The city of Los Angeles sends 200, yes, two hundred tons of euthanized cats and dogs to a company called West Coast Rendering every month! She also found in her investigation that not only are the whole pets rendered, but their collars and tags are too! Several years before the Los Angeles Times ran an article about a mistreated circus elephant that died of TB. The elephant's body was sent to a nearby rendering plant.
When you read the labels of pet foods it shows that there are vitamins added and this is because there is so little nutrition in the food, they have to add the vitamins to pass the minimum level of nutrition set by the AAFCO.
As bad or worse than the meat in the pet food, are the chemicals to make it look fresh. The semis moist are the worst. These use a chemical called propylene glycol, a compound that is identical to ethylene glycol, which is anti-freeze. These moist pet foods will stay fresh for years and no wonder!
The preservatives are also bad. Pet foods are allowed to use preservatives that were outlawed for humans. BHA and BHT, suspected to be carcinogens, are found in human food but in minute quantities and we don't eat these foods everyday as our only food source. Ethoxquin used in many brands was made by Monsanto originally for a rubber stabilizer in tires. In pet foods it keeps the fat from turning rancid. It is used in farm animal feed especially poultry, which is to say people are eating these chickens also. But in pet foods the chemical is used directly. Many slaughter houses and rendering plants use Ethoxquin to preserve the meat and this way it does not need to be listed in the pet food ingredient.
In addition to the preservatives are the artificial food dyes; Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 2 all are inorganic and toxic. Since dogs or cats do not see color like we do why do the pet food manufactures put the dye in the food? It's because if we saw what it looked like we wouldn't be impressed. Instead of the gray color it is they make it red and meaty looking.
Corn syrup and other sugars are also added to many pet foods to make them taste better.
Imagine waking up in the morning and make your self a breakfast of tainted cattle, dog or cat meat, throw in a few beaks, feet and feathers, smother it with corn syrup and chemicals, then sprinkle in some preservatives and dyes, pressure cook the hell out of it, let it cool and dig in! What if you had to eat this every day for the rest of your life?
Please check the labels of your pet food and see if it says what type of meat it is. If it says just meat or meat by-products it is probably from a rendering plant.
Good brands of pet food used vitamin E to preserve the food, not chemicals.
This is how the mad cow disease got started and this rendering information means that diseased cattle are being thrown in with the dogs and cats into the pot. It probably never occurs to most people that pet food would be made this way!
Dr Goldstein's book has lots more information that you should read about if you love your pets; such as the unnecessary use of Heartguard pills, flea drops, yearly vaccinations and much much more.
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