Where is Michelle to answer this question?
I read several startling facts concerning pet food in America, especially the cheaper and cheapest brands, in that there is no regulation as to what goes in them. Read the label and the higher up the list of contents SALT is, the higher the salt content in the food to make it tasty for the pet, who probably would not eat the shit without it.
In the last 30 years, the increase in cancer in pets has come from something like 1 in 200 to 1 in 3 because pet food makers add things forbidden in human foods. PLUS, several places buy up discarded meats from grocery stores, run this stuff through a process cooking and rending it. The meat is ground up and dumped into the petfood – no problem there. Things like diseased beef goes in it because it cannot be sold to humans, along with horse meat, diseased unsalable pork, chicken, fish remains and anything else food producers cannot convince congress is not really poisonous to humans. (The meat industry, idiotically, started grinding up beef neck meat for hamburger. There is a gland in the cows neck with produces hormones – thyroid – and hormones do not get destroied when cooked. Being too cheap to dispose of this meat, they used it and, some years back, people started popping up with thyroid problems and were put on pills. It took a while for disease control to discover what was going on and make the meat producers stop using that gland.)
**WHAT IS A PROBLEM, THOUGH ** is that they often ‘forget’ to take off the plastic wrappings the meat is still in when the grocer dumps it out. Plus, several companies accept road kill from counties and euthanized pets from vets. So, your sweet, furry, loving, fluffy and well loved cat is probably eating parts of Fido down the street who died from cancer, or poor, old Kitty, who was euthanized because of leukemia – and the chemicals remain in the meat. (Real cheap places don’t bother to skin the donations either.) Plus, that chicken-flavored food is probably 25% chicken parts --(DON’T ASK WHAT PARTS) – 25% squashed, rabid raccoon, squashed, aged squirrel, squashed Opossum, and squashed bird. Then the rest will be filler – third grade corn, wheat, rye, bone meal, organ meat (NICE dose of pituitary gland hormones included to screw up your pet), flour and assorted salts, preservatives and human proscribed color dyes.
Many fish cat foods, if you take time to look, have large chunks of bone in them, which most cats will spit out. Cats do have a tendency to get bladder problems and this extra calcium contributes to bladder stones.
You can have your pet food custom made – which the maker will cheerfully charge you about 4 times it’s value but it is, with a good maker, the best. You can have your vet suggest pet food, and safely take his advice, but you will pay more, especially for the Science Diet – which few pets like because it is GOOD for them and has less salt and flavor additives. The top brand pet foods are best, second grades are OK, and the cheap-o’s are the worst.
For a cat, it would be best to rotate it’s flavors because they tend to be affected by calcium and a high seafood, steady diet is not all that good. A bit of top grade dry food for them to crunch on in-between meals is good for them also. Unlike most dogs, they will eat until full and snack a little if it is there – not wolf it all down and beg for more.
Since there is no pet food regulations, the food is mostly carcinogenic, though you’d have to threaten to cut the balls off of the corporate owners to get them to admit it. Pet foods with high vegetable content are good also, but only in the high grades.
You want your pet to live longer and better without having to pay enormous vet bills? Write to congress about regulating the pet food industry. Until you do, several major companies will continue to sell you pet foods which will more than likely shorten the life of your pet.
What? Me worry?’
