Are we slowly killing our pets each time we feed them
commercial pet food?
by Ann N. Martin
My investigation of the commercial pet food industry began
in January 1990. Prior to that time, I had always fed my dogs and cats
commercial pet food. This changed when, after feeding my two dogs a well-known
brand of dog food, both became ill with vomiting and excessive thirst. Our
veterinarian advised me to put them on a homemade diet for a few days – cooked
hamburger, brown rice, and grated vegetables. Both dogs did very well on this
diet. Two days later I switched them back to the commercial diet and
encountered the same problems. Both the veterinarian and I were convinced there
was something in the food that was causing the problem.
A private lab showed that the
food contained excess levels of zinc, 1120 parts per million (ppm), a level
that would have caused the dogs' symptoms. It also contained over twenty other
heavy metals. The pet food company stated they were not responsible. I then
contacted the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture and found that this is a
virtually unregulated industry. Governments, U.S. and Canadian, only regulate
the labeling of the food: the name and address of the company, weight of the
product, and if it is made for a dog or cat; nothing more. If that was the
case, what else was going into these foods that we, the pet owners, were not
aware of?
Road Kill and Garbage
A friend, a veterinarian in
California, had told me that euthanized dogs and cats from veterinary clinics
and shelters were routinely rendered and used as sources of protein in pet
food. As a Canadian, I never thought it would happen in Ontario, where I live.
I was wrong. I soon learned that almost every veterinarian clinic in the city
was using a dead-stock removal company that picked up the pets and sold them to
a broker, who sold them to rendering plants in Quebec. The rendering plant that
was paying the highest amount at that time, Sanimal Group, purchased most of
the dead animals.
The Minister of Agriculture
in Quebec advised me that the dogs and cats were cooked along with other
material. This material, as I later learned, included dead, diseased, dying,
and disabled (4-D) animals, slaughterhouse waste, road kill, garbage from
restaurants and grocery stores, and even zoo animals. The use of such
ingredients is perfectly legal. Because well over 90% of the pet food sold in
Canada is imported from the U.S., I began to investigate America's pet food
industry.
The United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that this industry is essentially
self-regulated. The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), a
non-governmental body, oversees labeling text and provides a list of
ingredients that can be used in livestock and pet food. Some ingredients on the
list: hydrolyzed hair, dehydrated garbage, manure, swine waste, ruminant waste,
poultry waste, and "undried processed animal waste products." Undried
waste products are excreta from any animal except humans.
The Food and Drug
Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA/CVM) oversees drugs that are
used in the food, but has no input as to the sources of the ingredients. As
with the AAFCO, the only input as far as ingredients relates to the labeling.
If the label says that the product contains 24% protein, it must contain 24%
protein; the source of the protein doesn't matter. This also applies to any
grains or fats in the pet food.
The Pet Food Institute (PFI)
is an association that represents the interests of the pet food industry. Over
the years, the PFI has insisted that the companies they represent use only
quality ingredients. I have questioned this organization many times as to what
testing the pet food companies do to determine the sources of protein, the meat
meal, which they buy from rendering plants. They have chosen not to respond.
Their silence says it all.
In the fall of 1997 my first
book, Food Pets Die For, made people
aware of the dubious ingredients in some commercial pet foods. Pet owners were
shocked that their euthanized pets could well be ending up in pet foods.
Naturally, the pet food industry denied this was happening.
Are We Turning Our Pets Into Cannibals?
Not only was the rendering
plant in Quebec accepting euthanized animals for rendering, this practice was
also being carried on by many rendering plants in the U.S. In a July 12, 1994
letter from the FDA/CVM, Christine Richmond wrote, "In recognizing the
need for disposal of a large number of unwanted pets in this country, CVM has
not acted to specifically prohibit the rendering of pets. However, that is not
to say that the practice of using this material in pet food is condoned by
CVM." It is not condoned, but no steps have ever been taken to prohibit
the use of dogs and cats in pet foods.
In 1995 Van Smith, a reporter
from the Baltimore City Paper, wrote an extensive article,
replete with pictures, documenting his day riding with a truck from a rendering
plant called Valley Proteins. Smith describes how carcasses of zoo animals are
rendered along with "thousands of dead dogs, cats, raccoons, possums,
deer, foxes, snakes, and the rest that local animal shelters and road kill
patrols must dispose of each month." Pictures show barrels overflowing
with dead dogs and cats waiting to be rendered.
In January of 2000, Florida's
Gainesville Sun published a story on
the Alachua County Animal Shelter, whose employees had to deliver the
euthanized animals to the rendering plant. Reporter Paula Rausch wrote that the
employees had to "lift them off the truck and heave them into a pit
exposing themselves to foul odors, putrid substances underfoot, and having to
see the grinding going on." These duties were taking a toll on the staff
at the shelter. In January of 2002, I contacted the Alachua County Animal Shelter
in Florida and was pleased to learn that their employees no longer had to truck
the euthanized animals to a rendering plant. They had built a crematorium for
disposal of animals. Also, in March of 2000, due to public outcry, Valley
Protein of the Baltimore area stopped accepting dogs and cats, leaving shelters
in a dilemma as to how to dispose of their animals.
Before the publication of the
revised edition of Food Pets Die For
in 2003, I learned that Sanimal, the large rendering plant in Quebec, now
refuses to accept the carcasses of dogs and cats. Philip Lee-Shanok, a reporter
for the Toronto Star interviewed
Mario Couture, Sanimal's head of procurement, about euthanized pets rendered
into pet food. Couture said, "This food is healthy and good, but some people
don't like to see meat meal that contains pets."
So, there has been some
progress. However, in 2001, I contacted the Ministry of Agriculture in Quebec
and asked if any other rendering plants in Quebec were accepting and rendering
dogs and cats. Their reply was, "Yes, here is the establishment that now
accepts cats and dogs, Maple Leaf, Inc.," which also owns Rothsay
Rendering and Shur-Gain pet foods.
200 Tons a Month
In research for my second
book, Protect Your Pet, it became
clear that California operated more rendering plants and sent more pets to
rendering than any other state. Sandra Blakeslee, a reporter for The New York Times, in a March 1997
interview quotes Chuck Ellis, a spokesman for the Los Angeles sanitation
department, "Los Angeles sends 200 tons of euthanized cats and dogs to
West Coast Rendering every month."
After acquiring a list of
U.S. animal shelters and veterinary clinics, I e-mailed the ones in California
and asked how they disposed of euthanized animals. Ninety percent said they sent
the animals to rendering. The replies I received named two companies that
picked up the animals from their facilities: D&D Disposal in California and
Koefran Services in Nevada.
An employee at a Humane
Society in California wrote that in his area, Escondido, D&D Disposal picks
up about one-hundred bodies each week. In the same area, there are three other
shelters and more than one hundred veterinarians using the same disposal
company. D&D was rather hard to find, but fortunately one shelter had a
complete address for them. D&D shares the same address as West Coast
Rendering in Vernon, California. Interestingly, Baker Commodities, another
rendering plant notorious for rendering companion animals, is within a block of
West Coast Rendering, as is a large pet food company that produces several
popular brands of pet food.
Unfit for Human Consumption
As with the sources of
protein, grains used in dry pet foods are materials unfit for human
consumption. These can include broken grains, hulls, chaff, joints, and can be
contaminated with straw, dust, sand, dirt and weed seeds. In addition, in less
than ten years we have seen two major recalls of pet foods because of mycotoxin
contamination. Mycotoxin is a fungus that occurs when grains are stored in damp
conditions. Many mycotoxins can cause serious illness and even death in both
humans and pets.
In 1995, Nature's Recipe
pulled thousands of tins of dog food off shelves after dogs began to vomit and
lose their appetites. The fungus in this product was vomitoxin, caused by moldy
wheat used in the foods. Although not a deadly toxin, it can cause serious
illness in pets.
In late 1998, Doane Products,
the manufacturer of many private-label foods including Old Roy, recalled over
fifty lines of pet food. The deaths of roughly 25 dogs were attributed to
aflatoxin, a deadly toxin found in the corn Doane had used in their products.
How many other pets have become ill and died from contaminated pet foods, with
their owners being unaware of the true cause?
Euthanizing Drugs
In the first edition of Food Pets Die For, I wrote about studies
by the University of Minnesota which showed that the euthanizing drug sodium
pentobarbital withstood the rendering process without degrading. This drug is
used primarily to euthanize dogs and cats. Animals euthanized with this drug
were ending up in pet food, but no one could be sure from batch to batch how
much of this drug was actually in the finished product.
In May of 2001, I filed a
request under the Freedom of Information Act requesting all documentation
prepared by the FDA/CVM relating to their tests of dry commercial dog foods for
sodium pentobarbital levels. Again the waiting began. In September of 2001, I
received a reply from the Office of Communications for the FDA, "We request
you wait until the evaluation process is complete, at which time we will send
the full results to you." They expected these to be ready in January of
2002. It had been well over two years since I first requested the information,
and five years from the time they had begun testing these foods.
Finally, the results were
published in early March of 2002. In the 74 samples analyzed, over half
contained levels of this drug. Some brands shown to contain this drug included
Old Roy Puppy Formula, Kibbles 'n Bits Beefy Bits, Dad's Bite Size Meal, and
Pet Gold Master Formula Puppy Formulation. In an earlier study done in 1998,
the FDA found other pet foods containing this drug, although the amounts were
not listed in their report: Ken-L-Ration, Trailblazer, ProPlan, and Nutro –
Premium. These are just a few of the brands listed.
The FDA/CVM also assessed the
risk to dogs who ingest sodium pentobarbital in pet food. The report concluded
that the levels of exposure to sodium pentobarbital that the animal might
receive through food are "unlikely to cause them any adverse health
effect." However, the FDA/CVM has admitted that if these levels, any
levels for that matter, of sodium pentobarbital were found in human food it
would be pulled from the shelves immediately.
I wrote to Stephen Sundlof,
Director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, regarding this drug and
the fact that under the Code of Federal Regulations it states, "Do not use
in animals intended for food." In a letter dated March 22, 2002, he replied,
"A euthanasia solution such as pentobarbital cannot have a withdrawal time
and its mechanism of action leads to tissue residue, so it could not be used to
euthanize animals intended for human or animal food." So, sodium
pentobarbital is not allowed for use in either human or animal food, yet the
FDA does not plan to take any steps to prohibit its presence in pet food.
Are we slowly killing our
pets each time we feed them commercial pet food? Although the FDA/CVM tested
many pet foods, we do not know if the food we are feeding our pets contains
this drug, nor do we know the long-term effects of ingesting this drug. In the
last ten years, however, some other species, primarily birds of prey, have died
from ingesting euthanized dogs and cats buried at landfill sites. Sodium
pentobarbital stays in the tissues of these animals for extended lengths of
time. Bears and even a tiger have also died after eating animals euthanized
with this drug.
It is clear that any animal
that is euthanized with sodium pentobarbital should be incinerated, not
rendered and fed back to other animals.
Spin Control
The FDA/CVM also decided to
undertake DNA testing on the commercial dog foods they tested. Their press
release stated that no dog or cat DNA was detected. Therefore, they concluded
"the pentobarbital residues are entering pet foods from euthanized,
rendered cattle or even horses."
However, in communications with agriculture veterinarians, most said
that sodium pentobarbital is seldom, if ever, used to euthanize cattle. Rather,
cattle are killed by captive bolt and gunshot. Horses are sometimes killed with
this euthanizing agent in special circumstances, but generally the methods used
to kill cattle are also used on horses.
Also, the DNA testing results
were extremely vague and provided no insight into the testing methods. What it
amounted to was, "Take our word for it, no dog and cat DNA was detected in
the food we tested." After consulting several forensic scientists, it
became clear that if indeed the FDA/CVM did such testing, the methods used
would be extremely important. Yet no information was given on the DNA primers
used, and no information was given regarding whether they tested for all the
metabolites of pentobarbital.
Clearly, the FDA/CVM had been
feeling the heat about the use of euthanized pets in commercial pet food. With
their press release noting that no dog and cat DNA existed in the rendered dog
foods, perhaps they felt that pet owners would no longer confront the industry
with the fact that companion animals were being used as sources of proteins in
their products.
Inside Iams' Research Labs
After spending over thirteen
years researching this industry, I thought I was aware of all aspects of the
issue of the ingredients used in pet foods. I was wrong. In early January of
2002, I received a letter from a student at the University of Illinois
concerning nine dogs that were housed in a windowless lab at the University.
These dogs had cannula (tubes) surgically implanted in their sides so samples
of digested food could be taken. The study included feeding the dogs raw and
rendered animal by-products, including "poultry necks and backs and
viscera, and ground up poultry feathers." Until 2002, this research was
funded by the pet food giant Iams, but now is being funded by the soybean
industry and the USDA.
Over the years, I knew of
dogs and cats being used for research in human medicine, a practice I don't
approve of, but never thought an industry that claimed to care about the
welfare of pets would undertake such barbaric practices. I was soon to learn
that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Iams in particular had been
notorious for carrying on such experimentation.
Two animal rights
organizations, In Defense of Animals, based in the United States, and Uncaged,
based in the United Kingdom, have outlined some of these animal experiments.
According to Iams, these studies were needed to support its nutritional claims,
which it uses to market its products. Iams experimentation conducted on dogs
and cats included:
1. Twenty-eight cats' bellies
were cut to see the effect of feeding them fiber, and then the cats were
killed. Bueno, AR, et al, Nutrition
Research, Vol. 20, No. 9, pp. 1319-1328, 2000.
2. Twenty-four young dogs
were intentionally put into kidney failure, subjected to invasive
experimentation, then killed. University of Georgia and the Iams Company,
White, JV, et al, American Journal of
Veterinary Research, Vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 1357-1365, 1991.
3. Thirty-one dogs' kidneys
were removed to increase the risk of kidney disease, and then they were killed
and dissected. University of Georgia and the Iams Company, Finco, DR, et al, American Journal of Veterinary Research,
Vol. 55, No. 9, pp. 1282-1290, 1994.
4. Bones in eighteen dogs'
front and back legs were cut out and stressed until they broke. University of
Wisconsin and the Iams Company, Crenshaw, TD, et al, Proceedings of the 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium.
5. Ten dogs were killed to
study the effect of fiber in diets. Mississippi State University and the Iams
Company, Buddington, RK, et al, American
Journal of Veterinary Research, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 354-358, 1999.
6. Eighteen male puppies'
kidneys were chemically damaged, experimental diets were fed, tubes were
inserted in their penises, and then the puppies were killed. Colorado State
University and the Iams Company, Grauer, GF, et al, American Journal of Veterinary Research, Vol. 57, No. 6, pp.
948-956, 1996.
7. Twenty-eight cats had
surgically forced kidney failure and either died during the experiment or were
killed, to study the effects of protein. University of Georgia and the Iams
Company, Proceedings of the 1998 Iams
Nutrition Symposium.
8. Fifteen dogs' bellies were
cut open and tubes attached to their intestines, the contents of which were
pumped out every ten minutes for two hours. Then the dogs were killed.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Iams Company, Hallman, JE, et al, Nutrition Research, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.
303-313, 1996.
9. Twenty-four cats had their
female organs and parts of their livers removed, were made obese, and then were
starved, University of Kentucky and the Iams Company, Ibrahim, WH, et al, American Journal of Veterinary Research,
Vol. 61, No. 5, May 2000.
10. Thirty dogs were
intentionally wounded and patches of skin containing the wounds removed to
study wound healing. Auburn University and the Iams Company, Mooney, MA, et al,
American Journal of Veterinary Research,
Vol. 59, No. 7, pp. 859-863, 1998.
Procter and Gamble (P&G)
purchased Iams in September 1999 and issued a code of ethics. Animal People, an
online organization devoted to the health and welfare of pets, reported in June
2001 that P&G stated its intention to phase out animal testing as fast as
alternatives can be developed and approved by regulators. In 2002, an investigator
from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) infiltrated one of the
Iams labs in the U.S. What they found was a horrifying situation where dogs and
cats were confined to small cages for up to six years. Dogs had their vocal
cords removed so they could not bark. The animals suffered severe heat in the
summer and freezing temperatures in the winter. Videotapes showed researchers
dumping dogs on concrete floors after cutting huge chunks of muscle out of
their thighs. Cats were confined in cinderblock rooms with wooden boards, nails
sticking out of them, as resting places. The PETA investigator watched as one
of these boards fell on a cat, killing the animal. The cruelty was continuing.
Iams is not the only company
involved in such cruel research. Ralston Purina, before their acquisition by
Nestle; Hill's Pet Nutrition, owned by Colgate Palmolive; Pedigree Pet Foods,
owned by Mars; and Alpo Pet Foods, before their acquisition of Nestle, are just
a few of the companies involved in such experimentation.
As we have seen, what we are
feeding our pets is garbage, unfit for human consumption and unfit to feed our
pets. The only way we will see a change in this industry is for pet owners to
boycott pet foods that contain undesirable ingredients. We must also boycott
companies that do experiments on animals, not only dogs and cats but all
animals. Together, you and I will make a difference.
Ann
N. Martin is the author of Protect Your Pet (NewSage Press, 2001) and the new edition
of Food
Pets Die For
(NewSage Press, 2003). To order her books, contact NewSage Press at
info@newsagepress.com or call toll free 877-695-2211.
