Is Commercial Dog Food REALLY Bad for Dogs?
Jake Dying From Dog Food
Jake was a big, brawny fellow, weighing approximately 75 pounds! He was so much a splendid and energetic specimen of the consummate black & white pointer, that we debated prior to altering him. However, there are too many animals for the available families already, which is how we got Jake before he could be sent to the local shelter and killed.
Jake was only 26 months old and just moving into his prime of life when he was a victim of the Menu dog food debacle that killed so many pets across the USA, and elsewhere.
I feel specially guilty since, although we were feeding Jake a purportedly high quality kibble, we had not changed him to the RAW diet as we had our other dogs. We wanted him to have a high-energy formula. We were mistaken!
Jake passed away of renal failure from that “high quality premium kibble”. And I’ll have to live with the memories of observing him waste away to a husk of his previous self and die.
I can’t fetch Jake back, but I can certainly begin telling everybody what came about and warn them!
What’s REALLY In That Meat Meal You’re Buying?
I was raised in the meat and grocery business. My father had a chain of grocery stores and meat markets so I found out all about slaughterhouses, being a meatman, and about rendering plants, from the age of seven or eight years old.
Though I was already very worried about animal rescue by that time, I did not associate, in my mind, the slaughterhouses and rendering plants with dogs and cats.
I was aware all the food waste and trimmings that could not be sold by the markets went to the rendering plant. Also, everything that got too stale to sell.
Since my father’s meat markets were all personal service, we had no prepacked meats whatsoever in any of the stores. Nothing that went to the renderer was enclosed in plastic or jammed on styrofoam trays.
Things are not that way any longer! As a matter of fact, today it’s almost impossible to buy stale, or out-of-date meat to feed your pets from any supermarket. They all have contracts with the renderer, just like all the animal shelters do.
Yep, stale scraps and meats are not the only things that go into those tubs! I was horror-stricken to discover that euthanized dogs and cats, as well as roadkill are going to those same rendering plants.
Put differently, the renderer removes everything unwanted, including:
* Meat still in it’s cello wrap and on styrofoam trays that’s no longer healthy for human consumption. (They don’t even bother to unwrap it.)
* Bodies of dead dogs and cats that have been euthanized by animal shelters, with the collars, flea collars and sodium pentothal still in or on them. (And the plastic bags they are transported in.)
* Then, of course, there are the poor dogs and cats who were gassed to death, which means the poison gas is in their lung tissues. They also go into the rendering vats, along with the plastic bags.
* Road kill gathered up by sanitation workers.
* Whatever other rubble that markets and others want to do away with, yet still earn some money with.
Everything in the rendering vats gets stewed together until it’s a pulp - and THAT UNIDENTIFIABLE MUSH is what forms the basis of the kibble you purchase in bags, and the dog and cat foods stuffed in cans.
We lost a total of 5 dogs to the Menu fiasco and commercial dog foods. First, Jake, since he was on “special high-quality premium kibble” instead of the RAW diet, and then four more cherished furbabies who had been feeling poorly. We were giving them their twice-daily medicines and vitamins in allegedly “special high quality premium canned food”, to disguise the bitter taste of their meds. They ALL died of renal failure.
I’ll NEVER believe dog food advertisers again. As a matter of fact, Beneful was exposed to be among the worst dog foods on the marketplace, while the ad campaigns all allege that it does something exceptional for dogs (all those scrumptious veggies you know, including corn).
From now on, I’m going to stay alert and informed, so I can keep my dogs healthy!
I discovered a terrible object lesson! I want you get informed and protect your darlings from unscrupulous dog food producers and their admen.
I wish healthiness for you and your loved ones, including the four-legged ones.
Brennan
Sep 02, 2008 | | dog health
