Amaze
02-07-2005, 04:37 PM
PET FOOD - OUR PETS ARE DYING FOR IT
IS THIS YOUR PET? READ ON!
By: Sandra Brigola
"Every time a pet trustingly eats another bowl of high sugar pet food, he is being brought that much closer to diabetes, hypoglycemia, overweight, nervousness, cataracts, allergy and death"
R.Geoffrey Broderick DVM
The multi-billion dollar pet food industry is killing our pets. With millions of dollars to spend on promotion and hype, pet owners have become victims of their marketing ploys. The expression "It's a dog eat dog world" is an apt description of the pet food industry.
Millions of euthanized pets from humane shelters and veterinary hospitals all across the United States and Eastern Canada are being recycled back into pet foods.
How does this come about? It is done through a process called rendering, Prior to World War 11, most slaughterhouses were all inclusive, that is - livestock was slaughtered and processed into fresh meat in one location; including rendering. During the years after World War 11, the meat industry became more specialized. A slaughterhouse just slaughtered and dressed the carcasses and the rendering of slaughter waste became a separate specialty - and no longer within the jurisdiction of government meat inspectors. Rendering companies are entities unto their own and service many slaughterhouses, plus process any other animal waste that can be rendered. Recent figures state that the US meat industry produces over 30 billion pounds of by-products per year in 286 plants nationwide.
In a September, 1995 article titled What's Cooking , Baltimore City Paper takes their readers through Valley Proteins, Baltimore's only rendering plant with very graphic pictures of dead animals stuffed into barrels, one picture shows a dead dog ; another is of fried animal parts! Neil Gagnon, general manager of Valley Proteins says that 150 million pounds of rotting flesh are fed into the plants grinders and cookers each year to produce 80 million pounds of the plants three products; meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease. Most goes into chicken feed, the rest into dry pet food.
The use of dead pets, work animals,zoo animals and wildlife as raw material is an aspect of the rendering process that Gagnon doesn't like to discuss. Valley Proteins sells inedible animal parts and rendered material to Alpo,Heinz and Ralston Purina among other pet food makers. He further states that the meat and bone meal made at the plant includes materials from pets and wildlife and about 5% goes into dry pet foods.
Closer to home, just outside Seattle is a rendering facility cleverly disguised as Baker Commodities. Their raw material again is collected from veterinary hospitals and humane societies across Washington State. Seattle humane shelters have their clients sign a waiver indicating that pet's bodies not collected by their owners will be sent to the rendering facility.
Baker Commodities, a facility which is guarded like Fort Knox, sells meat meal by the ton - average price is over $200.00 per ton. The majority of their product goes to American Nutrition of Ogden Utah which manufacturers over 175 different private label brands of pet food. Some product names you may be familiar with are Alpho, Kal Kan, Albertson's, Western Family and Atta -Boy.
One of the largest rendering facilities is owned by Colgate Palmolive , who incidentally own Hills Science Diet Pet Food.
Raw material from slaughterhouses is composed of material unfit for human consumption, this includes cancerous tumors, offal, fecal matter, mammary glands, feathers etc. The raw material is then denatured to prevent it from going back into the human food change. Denaturing can be done with carbolic acid, creosote, fuel oil, kerosene or citronella. In Canada, a proprietary chemical Birkolene B is used. In addition to the above raw materials supermarket meats, restaurant leftovers, flea collars from dead pets, cattle insecticide patches, pesticides and plastic bags and wrapping from these items are all combined in these toxic soups. Rendering personnel say " it is far too costly to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled steaks! " This whole mess is loaded into batch cookers that are fed continuously non stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from the bones in the hot soup. During this cooking process, the soup produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone is sent to a hammer mill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips. Once the batch is finished , all that is left is yellow grease, and meat and bone meal. This is what is used as a source of animal protein that goes into pet food and poultry, swine and cattle food.
In the veterinary text book, Euthanasia of the Companion Animal (1988), in the chapter headed , Animal Disposal: Fact and Fiction by David Cook, Cook states that "millions of America's deceased pets are being cooked and processed into pet food, most pet owners don't realize this fact. Does this raise questions of ethics that should be answered by the veterinary profession and the pet food industry?" Cook goes on to say, " Consider the introduction of dogs and cats into the human food chain by way of livestock food made from rendered by-products. What happens to all those toxic products that we use so liberally on our pets?"
Aside from the moral and ethical issues, this is the dilemma of recycling pets, road kill, and diseased animals of all types into the human and pet food chain.
IS THIS YOUR PET? READ ON!
By: Sandra Brigola
"Every time a pet trustingly eats another bowl of high sugar pet food, he is being brought that much closer to diabetes, hypoglycemia, overweight, nervousness, cataracts, allergy and death"
R.Geoffrey Broderick DVM
The multi-billion dollar pet food industry is killing our pets. With millions of dollars to spend on promotion and hype, pet owners have become victims of their marketing ploys. The expression "It's a dog eat dog world" is an apt description of the pet food industry.
Millions of euthanized pets from humane shelters and veterinary hospitals all across the United States and Eastern Canada are being recycled back into pet foods.
How does this come about? It is done through a process called rendering, Prior to World War 11, most slaughterhouses were all inclusive, that is - livestock was slaughtered and processed into fresh meat in one location; including rendering. During the years after World War 11, the meat industry became more specialized. A slaughterhouse just slaughtered and dressed the carcasses and the rendering of slaughter waste became a separate specialty - and no longer within the jurisdiction of government meat inspectors. Rendering companies are entities unto their own and service many slaughterhouses, plus process any other animal waste that can be rendered. Recent figures state that the US meat industry produces over 30 billion pounds of by-products per year in 286 plants nationwide.
In a September, 1995 article titled What's Cooking , Baltimore City Paper takes their readers through Valley Proteins, Baltimore's only rendering plant with very graphic pictures of dead animals stuffed into barrels, one picture shows a dead dog ; another is of fried animal parts! Neil Gagnon, general manager of Valley Proteins says that 150 million pounds of rotting flesh are fed into the plants grinders and cookers each year to produce 80 million pounds of the plants three products; meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease. Most goes into chicken feed, the rest into dry pet food.
The use of dead pets, work animals,zoo animals and wildlife as raw material is an aspect of the rendering process that Gagnon doesn't like to discuss. Valley Proteins sells inedible animal parts and rendered material to Alpo,Heinz and Ralston Purina among other pet food makers. He further states that the meat and bone meal made at the plant includes materials from pets and wildlife and about 5% goes into dry pet foods.
Closer to home, just outside Seattle is a rendering facility cleverly disguised as Baker Commodities. Their raw material again is collected from veterinary hospitals and humane societies across Washington State. Seattle humane shelters have their clients sign a waiver indicating that pet's bodies not collected by their owners will be sent to the rendering facility.
Baker Commodities, a facility which is guarded like Fort Knox, sells meat meal by the ton - average price is over $200.00 per ton. The majority of their product goes to American Nutrition of Ogden Utah which manufacturers over 175 different private label brands of pet food. Some product names you may be familiar with are Alpho, Kal Kan, Albertson's, Western Family and Atta -Boy.
One of the largest rendering facilities is owned by Colgate Palmolive , who incidentally own Hills Science Diet Pet Food.
Raw material from slaughterhouses is composed of material unfit for human consumption, this includes cancerous tumors, offal, fecal matter, mammary glands, feathers etc. The raw material is then denatured to prevent it from going back into the human food change. Denaturing can be done with carbolic acid, creosote, fuel oil, kerosene or citronella. In Canada, a proprietary chemical Birkolene B is used. In addition to the above raw materials supermarket meats, restaurant leftovers, flea collars from dead pets, cattle insecticide patches, pesticides and plastic bags and wrapping from these items are all combined in these toxic soups. Rendering personnel say " it is far too costly to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled steaks! " This whole mess is loaded into batch cookers that are fed continuously non stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from the bones in the hot soup. During this cooking process, the soup produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone is sent to a hammer mill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips. Once the batch is finished , all that is left is yellow grease, and meat and bone meal. This is what is used as a source of animal protein that goes into pet food and poultry, swine and cattle food.
In the veterinary text book, Euthanasia of the Companion Animal (1988), in the chapter headed , Animal Disposal: Fact and Fiction by David Cook, Cook states that "millions of America's deceased pets are being cooked and processed into pet food, most pet owners don't realize this fact. Does this raise questions of ethics that should be answered by the veterinary profession and the pet food industry?" Cook goes on to say, " Consider the introduction of dogs and cats into the human food chain by way of livestock food made from rendered by-products. What happens to all those toxic products that we use so liberally on our pets?"
Aside from the moral and ethical issues, this is the dilemma of recycling pets, road kill, and diseased animals of all types into the human and pet food chain.