How do they know what pet food tastes like?

Factual Questions
1

No, seriously. Fark had up a highly amusing article ( http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000076.html ) about a guy who attempted to eat Bacon-flavored dog treats that claim a dog cannot tell them from actual bacon. As should not be surprising, they tasted to him nothing at all like bacon. (even on a BLT)

So this brought to mind something I’ve wondered about off and on for a long time - how DO they know what things taste like to dogs & cats? Do they actually know at all? Or is it all a scam to trick us into buying “flavored” treats that taste no different to pets? I’m inclined to think the latter, since I can imagine no way of asking, “Ok Garfield, meow once if this tastes like lasagna.”

Surely some of the denizens here work in the pet food industry and can answer this burning query.

2

What I’ve always wondered is, why don’t they make mouse flavored cat food? Or sparrow, etc.

3

Heh. Or there’s the Sam & Max pet food: “Guaranteed to taste like something a dog would eat. Mmmmm.”

4

They do actually employ (human) tasters, I remember reaidng an inteview with one of these fools in the Cat Protection Legaue magazine.