Pet Food Recall
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Pet food ranking
Pet foods have changed dramatically over the last decade. Many premium foods
use ingredients that could easily be part of the human food chain while other
cheaper products use by-products that you wouldn’t find in any human grade
product. So is it true that you get what you pay for? “Yes, it’s probably still true,”
explains Dr. Hofve. “However there may be more shades of gray than we thought!”
The following is Dr. Hofve’s guide for choosing a high quality food:
• “There are the really cheap foods like the generic/private labeled stuff they sell
at the grocery and discount stores. Those are definitely no-no’s.
• “Then you’ve got your Friskies/Fancy Feast/Pedigree type foods. Nestlé Purina
is a specialist in this area and has about one-third of the market. Del Monte also
competes in this ballpark. They’re not great quality, but they’re okay for occasional
use. A wild carnivore would eat the whole prey animal, by-products and all. You
just don’t want to rely on by-products to the exclusion of meat for your pet’s whole diet.
• “Then there is the next step up, the Iams/Hill’s/Nutro/high-end Purina (One,
ProPlan) foods. While some of the ingredients -- like wheat gluten -- are used for all
of them, some of the other ingredients are not. Hill’s and Nutro both order specific
by-products, such as only organ meat—in the case of Nutro, liver and “giblets”
which would be analogous to what we think of as giblets—kidneys, heart, and liver.
Many of the canned foods in these lines contain actual meat as well as by-products;
the dry foods may have a little meat as well, but typically contain mostly by-product
meal, meat-and-bone-meal, and/or corn gluten meal, all cheap substitutes for meat
proteins. These foods are all about the same in terms of cost.
• “Then you have the next level of foods, those that use real meat (with a name,
like chicken or lamb) instead of by-products, and no grain substitutions for meat.
These do tend to be a little pricier, but they are in a completely different ballpark
than the mass-marketed brands. I recommend making most of one’s purchases
from this class.
• “Top of the heap, I would put the frozen raw diets. Not all are great, but the more
popular ones are decent.
• “Best of all are well-designed and well-executed raw and homemade diets.” |
What to avoid in pet food
“By-products, meat and bone meal (including beef and bone meal and whatever
else they come up with next week), by-product meal, corn (all), wheat (all), and
synthetic preservatives (BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin, propyl gallate, propylene glycol).
I’m also adding menadione (synthetic vitamin K) to the avoid list, although as far
as I know only one company is using it.”
For a complete list of recalled products visit www.menufoods.com/recall
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Published in
the June/July 2007 issue of Animal
Wellness |
