Decifering Your Pet Food Label

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The right diet can make all the difference in the world for your pet, but selecting the right pet food can be difficult.  Advertisers would have us believe that those bags are full of nutritious, vitamin packed ingredients.  A lot of the labeling terms are deceiving.  Sometimes they don't adequately describe the material used.  Other times they're just indecipherable terms.  You might be shocked to know what some of those innocuous sounding terms are hiding.

Following are some interpretations of the ingredient terms you might see on the back of your pet food bag.

Meat by-products  This includes all of the offal determined not fit for human consumption.  In other words organs like the liver, kidneys, spleen, or intestines.  It is permitted to use diseased organs in this category.


Poultry by-products  This is the same thing, feet, heads organs all go into your pet's food.

Poultry by-product This is the same as above except that it is ground.  Keep in mind that although "clean" meats are supposed to be used for these ingredients.  Some contamination with feathers or fecal matter is considered unavoidable, so small amounts of these are permitted.

Animal Blood  Animal blood is dried and considered an acceptable source of protein

Hydrolized Hair  Really, the hair is cleaned and treated with heat to make it an acceptable ingredient in commercial pet food.

Other sources of protein often used are dehydrated food waste and dehydrated paunch.  This list could go on, but I suspect you get the idea.  Just keep in mind that if you find the term meat by-product on your pet food label your dog is really getting the waste materials collected during the slaughterhouse process.  This stuff is deemed not fit for human consumption, yet the Association For American Feed Control Officials have no problem approving the stuff for Fido's food.  Again this is about profit.  If they can make money from the junk, the refuse then they absolutely will.

These ingredients make up a percentage of the dry weight, but the main ingredient is generally some kind of grain.  Corn is used most of the time.  Corn bran, corn flower, corn gluten:  again these components are often the by-product of some other food industry process.  Usually the milling process.

Wheat comes in a close second place on labels. So really, if your dog is eating a commercial brand pet food he is subsisting on a diet high in grains and low in protein.  A dog's digestive system doesn't adequately utilize grains or carbohydrates in general.  This just is not an ideal diet for an animal who is naturally a carnivore.  It's entirely possible that your dog is malnourished if he has this kind of diet.


You'll be amazed by the improvements you see when your dog's diet is optimized.  Expect a shinier, healthier coat.  If your dog has a strong unpleasant "dog" odor you'll probably see improvement there as well.  Muscle tone can improve, and many allergies and skin irritations are the result of poor nutrition. 

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What Is Your Pet Really Eating?

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When we shop for ourselves we know that organic food  is better than conventional.  Organic foods have more nutrients and less pesticide residues than conventional foods.  Not to mention that the intensive animal farming practices used in agriculture today are responsible for increasing incidences of antibiotic resistance.  So for ourselves we choose top quality organic produce and if we eat meat we choose fresh free range chicken, eggs and beef, but what about our pets?

The United States pet food industry is a 16.1 billion dollar a year business, and advertisers influence us with images of plump chickens, choice cuts of beef and healthy grains, but the reality is a little different.  The fact is that the pet food industry is more or less a giant garbage disposal for the human agricultural business.  All the stuff they figure we wont eat or anything that's not fit for human consumption ends up in that innocuous bag of kibble you bring home for Spot.  It's a business after all.  Why let anything go to waste when it could possibly turn a profit?  Keep in mind that this is most often true for the bags and cans of food that you find in supermarkets, but it is possible to find better products at pet stores, health food stores, and vets offices.

Pet food labeling is subject to a standard outlined by the Association of American Feed Control Officials.  Their label requirements are as follows.  If your dog food as touted as 100% anything then in must be in fact 100%.  The product can't contain any other ingredient except water.  If the product is designated as 95% then in must contain chicken, beef, or fish up to 95% of the total weight of the product again excluding water.  There aren't a lot of products like these on the shelves, as an all meat diet is not considered good nutrition these days.  More frequently you will see the "dinner", "formula", or "platter" designations.  In these cases only a small percentage of the food needs to be made from meat.  In the case of the "dinner" foods only 25%, and for the others as little as 10% is considered acceptable.

Finally, the "flavor" designation is permitted when the pet food contains enough of an animal product to give the food the characteristic of that ingredient.  In other words, a small bit of animal tissue is necessart, and in some cases artificial flavors are used instead.  This is also acceptable.  Next your pet's food is gussied up with any number of additives, artificial colors, and flavors.  Not necessarily to make it taste better for the animal, but to make it more attractive to their human owners.

Some pet food companies sell more expensive products in hopes that we will believe their food is superior,  to the cheaper varieties.  The fact is that sometimes these premium brands are actually processed in the same factory, on the same machines, with the same ingredients as other less expensive varieties.  It's a good idea to thoroughly research you pet's food.  In future posts I will discuss better pet food options.  There are plenty of healthy organic varieties to choose from, and if you pet suffers from any particular allergy or ailment it's possible to find a food that will acomodate those special needs.

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