When I did research for my book, Why is Cancer Killing Our Pets?, I came to realize that two of the worst culprits in many domestic animal illnesses are commercial pet foods and over-vaccination. Cancer is not the only disease that may be caused or precipitated by feeding animals a poor quality diet.
Our domestic animal companions weren’t always fed commercially prepared foods. According to the Pet Food Institute, James Spratt, an electrician from Ohio, made the first commercial dog biscuit around 1860 while in London trying to sell lightning rods. He felt dogs being fed leftovers from ships would fare better with his combination of "wheat meals, vegetables, beetroot, and meat." Spratt’s company did well, selling food to Englishmen with sporting dogs. Around 1890, Spratt’s company went public and began operations in the United States. Several other U.S. companies also began to produce biscuits and dry kibble for dogs based on "limited nutritional knowledge." After World War I, canned horsemeat for dogs was readily available. In the 1930s, both canned cat food and dry dog foods showed up on grocery shelves.
In the fifties and sixties the use of commercial pet food expanded greatly. Just as we wanted to eat foods that required less preparation, so did we want to feed our animals this way, too. As Nick Downing, a senior analyst with Datamonitor Europe who has examined trends in the pet food industry, writes, "Longer working hours, increasing numbers of working women and the growth of single adult households have placed increasing pressure on time, creating a strong demand for easy-to-keep, low-maintenance pets."
Compare eating a can of commercial cat food to eating tinned spaghetti or a canned meat product every day, day in and day out. Wouldn’t we all develop physical problems or diseases with no fresh food in our diets? At the very least, we’d become bored.
When I was doing my research, I bought an 1897 pamphlet called Diseases of the Dog and How to Feed, by H. Clay Glover, V.S., a specialist in canine diseases who was veterinarian to the Westminster Kennel Club for twenty years. Dr. Glover writes, "During the past few years there have been a number of prepared dog foods introduced into the market, particularly in biscuit form. I appeal to common sense when I ask, can a food that has to undergo the amount of heat that these biscuits do in order to prevent their spoiling possess the same amount of nutrition that freshly prepared food does? Can they contain, and be preserved for any length of time, the variety of vegetable and animal food necessary to perfect health?
"At my own kennels, which for a number of years contained from forty to fifty dogs, the food was prepared fresh daily after the following manner: beef heads, neck, flanks, and bones were put in a large pot and thoroughly boiled, the bones then taken out and a quantity of vegetables added.... If no rice was used the stew was thickened with a coarse grade of wheat flour stirred in slowly.... Each dog got, two or three times a week, a large bone. This keeps the teeth clean and the small particles gnawed off contribute towards supplying nutrition to the animal’s bone structures. During the hunting season, dogs at work got besides this a liberal allowance of raw meat. This I consider the most approved mode of feeding, from the fact that the dogs get a variety of fresh, nutritious diet which is quite as important to the health of the dog as to that of a man."
One of the reasons people earlier in this century were afraid to feed their dogs meat, either raw or cooked, was scare stories about what meat did to canines. Stories abounded about meat making them vicious or fierce, or giving them worms or eczema. Refuting these theories, John Lynn Leonard, DVM, wrote in 1928, "First of all, let it be explained right here that the infamous, whimsical ideas that dogs should not have milk to drink and that meat is undesirable, even dangerous, especially for puppies, should be entirely ignored. Anyone advocating these ideas should never as much as look at a dog. They are as antique as their ideas."
Until quite recently, many of us have been content with or ignorant about feeding our dogs and cats commercial foods, believing that pet food companies know best. However, a few things have shifted our perceptions, including rising disease rates and holistic health or investigative books on the subject of animal nutrition. One of the most radical and convincing is Ann Martin’s book, Food Pets Die For, published in 1997. As Dr. Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States, says, "Ann Martin is to the pet food industry what Rachel Carson was to the petro-chemical-pesticide industry."
In preparation for writing this book, Martin spent seven years investigating the commercial pet food industry, and what she uncovered isn’t pretty.
Perhaps the most compelling reason, morally, not to feed your dog or cat commercial pet foods is that there are rendered, euthanized pets in much of this food. These pets have been mixed with other materials, including some condemned for human foods: "rotten meat from supermarket shelves, restaurant grease,...4-D (dead, diseased, dying, and disabled) animals, roadkill." The Minister of Agriculture of Québec told Martin that, indeed, dead animals are cooked with viscera, bones, and fats; the fur is not removed. In both the United States and Canada, this rendering of pets is not illegal. Martin points to an article originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle in which an employee and ex-employee of a rendering plant admitted that their company rendered approximately 250,000 to 500,000 pounds of animals, scraps, and more, including "somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of dogs and cats a day."
That’s enough to put most of us off, isn’t it? Martin, a Canadian writer who lives with several animal companions, went further in her investigations and discovered that some pets are euthanized with sodium pentobarbital and then rendered. This does not break down the poison, yet this rendered material goes into commercial pet food and into feed for cows, pigs, and horses.
Martin adds that a pet food manufacturer might reject some rendered materials for a variety of reasons: including "off odor,...excessive feathers,...bone chunks, ...added blood,...heavy metals,...insect infestation," and more.
Wendell O. Belfield, DVM, author of How to Have a Healthier Dog and The Very Healthy Cat Book (both written with Martin Zucker), was a veterinary meat inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state of California for seven years. In this job, he saw terrible things, including the use of dead pets with sodium pentobarbital in their bodies. In the finished rendered products, fat stabilizers are introduced to prevent rancidity. The preservatives BHA and BHT are "both known to cause liver and kidney dysfunction." Some European countries prohibit their use or importation. Ethoxyquin (EQ) is "suspected of being a cancer-causing agent." Many semi-moist dog foods contain propylene glycol, a cousin of antifreeze that "causes the destruction of red blood cells." Dr. Belfield informs us that lead often shows up in pet foods, too, simply as a result of our environment. Pulling no punches, Belfield concludes, "Any veterinary nutritionist, government health official, or scientist who says feeding the aforementioned chemicals daily to our pets will not have a deleterious effect on them is living in a fool’s paradise."
Two-thirds of the pet food manufactured in the United States contains added preservatives, according to the Animal Protection Institute. There are many additives as well, including coloring agents, emulsifiers, lubricants, flavoring agents, pH control agents, synergists, solvents, and a dozen or so more. "Of the more than 8,600 recognized food additives today, no toxicity information is available for 46 percent of them," the institute claims. "Cancer-causing agents are sometimes permitted if they are used at low enough levels."
In the United States four of the five major pet food companies are part of major multinational food production companies: Colgate-Palmolive, Heinz, Nestlé, and Mars, the original pet food manufacturer. The pet food industry is actually an extension of the human food industry, although the pets get fed what we would not consider eating, that which is "unfit for human consumption." As of 1995 combined sales of cat and dog foods in the United States were $9.3 billion; all categories except moist cat foods showed increases. Pet food manufacturers often work hand in hand with veterinarian schools.
And, appallingly, according to Ann Martin’s extensive research, strict regulations of pet food products do not exist in the United States or Canada.
So what is a healthy diet for our animals, and how can we provide it for them? Many veterinarians and nutritionists now agree that the answer is a homemade diet.
In her book Keep Your Dog Healthy the Natural Way, Pat Lazarus recommends a homemade diet and describes the optimal preventive diet for an adult dog this way: One-third to one-half of the daily diet should be animal foods, preferably raw. These include chicken, turkey, organ meats, and occasionally fish. "Never give cooked bones, and be careful of bones in general," she writes. Sometimes other animal protein may be substituted, such as yogurt, raw milk, and raw egg yolks. Vegetables, fruits, and grains should make up most of the rest of the daily diet. The grains should be cooked; the vegetables and fruits, raw. Finally, the diet should include some polyunsaturated oil such as safflower or sesame oil; pure water; and vitamin and mineral supplements.
Dr. Richard Pitcairn, DVM, a guru among holistic veterinarians, also recommends a homemade diet; his is slightly different and a bit more complex. His basic diet, which works for both cats and dogs, includes a variety of meats — hamburger, chicken and turkey, some organ meats — mostly lean and ground up, and often fed raw. Although Pitcairn knows that many veterinarians are opposed to feeding raw meat because of concern about contracting diseases, in seventeen years of recommending raw foods he has never seen a problem with this practice. In fact, he sees improved health when animals are fed raw meat. He also includes dairy products (raw milk, cottage cheese, yogurt); eggs (either raw or lightly cooked); whole grains, cooked; legumes such as lentils, soybeans, split peas; and vegetables, ideally raw, such as carrots or alfalfa sprouts, though cooked corn, broccoli, and others can be included, all preferably organic. His book, Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, includes many recipes for dogs and cats.
Dr. Donna Raditic, DVM, of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, who, unlike many veterinarians, has a background in animal nutrition, recommends a homemade diet or the highest quality prepared foods plus supplements. She does not advocate raw food because she feels that most dogs and cats do not have good digestive capabilities. For animal diets, she lightly cooks vegetables, and says that white rice is more digestible for many animals than brown.
I have not found a lot of agreement out there regarding which — a raw or cooked diet — is more nutritious and will enable your pet to live a longer life. The jury seems to be out.
However, Ann Martin has had more luck than I have with her sources agreeing. Her new book, Protect Your Pet — More Shocking Facts, has an enlightening section based on her research into raw meat and bone diets. After corresponding with dozens of veterinarians (many of them specialists), nutritionists, pathologists, and others, Martin has come out firmly on the side of a cooked, homemade diet, similar to what she has been feeding her own five companion animals — cats and dogs — for twelve years. Her seal-point Siamese is twenty-six years old, so Martin must be doing something right!
She gives specific reasons based on extensive research and evidence. There may be harmful bacteria in meat; "pets suffer the effects of Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter [a dangerous bacteria] and Listeria from various sources"; there are also parasites in raw meat. A dog may die of "puncture wounds" after ingesting a raw bone. Some pets fed raw meat experience vomiting, diarrhea, pancreatitis, bone shards, and even "death at an early age." Writes Martin, "All the veterinarians I contacted advised against the practice of feeding bones of any kind. If you want your pet to have clean teeth, brushing seems to be the best method to follow."
Many vets with whom she corresponded recommended a diet with "raw fruits, vegetables, and grains, and any meat lightly cooked." Organic produce is best if you can afford it. But "all the veterinarians stated that feeding bones, raw or cooked, is downright dangerous." Even though she admits to respecting the work of Dr. Ian Billinghurst, B.V.Sc., an Australian veterinarian who created the Bones and Raw Food diet (BARF, a.k.a. Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods), she concludes, "The problems with the raw meat diet far outweigh the advantages. I understand that those who feed the raw meat diet to their pets believe they’re making the best possible choices they can for their pets." However, she will never do so.
Whatever route you decide to take with your own beloved animals, one thing seems certain. Most commercial pet food contains ingredients that are not good and are even dangerous for your pets. Moving in the direction of premium "natural" pet foods without chemicals and byproducts, and eventually toward a homemade diet — working with the advice of a trusted and up to date veterinarian — seems to be the kindest and perhaps the only route to take.
Deborah Straw is the author of Why is Cancer Killing Our Pets?: How You Can Protect and Treat Your Animal Companion (Healing Arts Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions, Bear & Co., Rochester, VT 05767), copyright © 2000 Deborah Straw. To order, call 800-246-8648.
Resources
Food Pets Die For, by Ann Martin (NewSage Press, 1997; $13.95)
Protect Your Pet — More Shocking Facts, by Ann Martin (NewSage Press, 2001; $13.95)
How to Have a Healthier Dog, by Wendell O. Belfield (Doubleday & Co., 1981; $11.95)
The Very Healthy Cat Book, by Wendell O. Belfield (Doubleday & Co., 1983; $11.95)
Keep Your Dog Healthy the Natural Way, by Pat Lazarus (Fawcett Books, 1999; $12.95)
Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, by Dr. Richard Pitcairn, DVM (Rodale Press, 1995; $17.95)