What You Should Know About Your Pet’s Food:
MeOW Welcome to Service Cats and Everything Feline on Furidays. We’re workin’ hard on exposin’ the truths behind the ingredients in your pet’s food. Who knew it could take so long to find definitions and reasons fur everythin’ pet food companies put in those bags and cans or pet feed. It’s fur sure nufffin’ like you humans walkin’ up to the butcher and orderin’ a grass fed steak as opposed to grain fed. Anyways, ifin you’ve missed any of the posts in this series you can ketch up by clickin’ the links on our Training Tips and Everything Feline page. And don’t furget to submit your own questions or topic suggestions by leavin’ a comment below or sendin’ us a purrivate email via our Contact page.
The following post will be written in human English for reader and translator ease. Our Service Cat posts aren’t intended to be an all inclusive Training Manual but rather Tips, Tricks and Techniques used/developed by mommy A thru her many years of animal training, cats in purr-ticular. And to offer insight into your questions about Everything Feline. Always remember, successful Training is all about Repetition and Rewards.
So, we thought we’d break things up a bit. There’s just too many ingredients in most pet feeds to list in one post anyways. We will be covering a lot of ingredients in this mini-series. Not all the ingredients we’ll cover are in every food/feed on the market. These posts are just to make you aware of what you need to look for and/or avoid. More than a few years back, the standard for label reading was to check for the first 3 ingredients listed. The idea was that those 3 ingredients made up the bulk of the contents of the bag or can. The problem with that theory is that you don’t often know where those ingredients come from, the quality of those ingredients or how they were processed.
Protein:
Let’s talk about Protein. Protein is required for your pet to live. Cats being obligate carnivores must have Meat. We can’t survive, much less thrive without it. But, what kind of meat or protein is found in most pet foods? The truth is, you can never be completely sure unless you’re preparing it in your kitchen. Pet food companies want to put pretty pictures on their labels to make it appear as if top shelf meat is contained within the packaging. However, often the protein is comprised of meat meals and by products that you would never feed kitty or doggy if you actually knew the truth. Rarely do they contain anything that remotely resembles the photo on the package. Pet food companies are allowed to use not only appropriately sourced and rendered meats, but also diseased, and non slaughtered animals, such as those killed by lethal injection (phenobarbital), road kill, drowned due to acts of God, etc.. Not only are these animals used, but they also throw in the feathers, hooves, beaks and everything else.
It’s then cooked at high temperatures, removing most if not all nutritional values, bleached/sterilized and then dried to be made into pet feed. At this stage it’s no longer called meat, it’s called meat meal. Now, pet food manufacturers would have you believe that meat meal provides a higher quality of protein for your pet than the actual meat does. If that’s the case, why don’t you humans eat meat meal? Why doesn’t the USDA (truthaboutpetfood.com) approve of these meats for human consumption?
Fanky fankfully, mine’s dinner is made with human grade meats
processed in a facility overseen by the USDA.
Mommy says she remembers a time when all pet foods had a statement on the label that warned against using the same utensils for pet food as one would use for human foods, even though those utensils would be washed between uses. That’s when mommy got serious about looking into the food she fed. After all, if whatever is contained inside that package is so toxic that it can’t even be cleaned off a stainless steel utensil, then how could it possibly be safe for us to eat?.
Time fur a nap.
The reality is, that there are far more deceptive tactics and ingredients in the pet feed industry. However, Not every company or food is bad. The best thing one can do is to educate themselves, and know the products you’re buying and serving to Fluffy and Fido. We’ll delve into more ingredients in the coming posts. Until then, get your questions asked and topic suggestions in. Just leave them in the comments section below or send us an email. And don’t furget to check out the other posts in this series on our Training Tips and Everything Feline page in our menu. We’re joinin’ Comedy Plus fur Feline Furiday. Our purrayers go out to all affected by the weather and storms.
Till the next time……………………………………………….Be Blest!!!
Luv and Hugs and Kitty Kisses
Deztinee and RaenaBelle
Service Cats U.S. 