Toxic Junk Pet Food

Toxic Junk Pet Food

The Shocking and Grisly Truth

Turning Waste Into Profits

The beginnings of the commercial petfood industry arose barely more than a century or so ago. The reason this industry came into being initially, was because a man named James Spratt realized that there was money to be made by packaging waste byproducts of the human food industry and selling them as food for pets. Fast forward a hundred years or so to the present, and lo and behold, the industrial manufacturing of commercial pet foods is a multibillion dollar business.

Would We Feed It If We Knew?

So what is actually in this stuff, and how is it made? And just how many folks have actually taken the time to find out for themselves just exactly what’s in those bags and cans of petfood that line the shelves of grocery stores and veterinarian’s waiting rooms the world over? Despite the fact that in the not so recent past, a significant number of pets have gotten sick, and some have even died from eating contaminated pet food, the sad truth is that far too few people have yet to really find out the truth about commercial pet food. But once most people do find out, they’re appalled, and soon realize that they must stop feeding this crap to their pets and find another alternative.

Not For the Faint of Heart

If you’ve yet to dredge up for yourself the truth about what’s really in commercial pet food and how it’s made, you'll find a very brief glimpse here. But be warned up front - even just a small taste of the truth about this subject is extremely unpleasant to say the least, and not for the squeamish. However it's something that's very important for you to know if you're going to make an informed decision about what to feed your pet. Besides reading this website, it's a good idea for you to do your own further investigations, so you can verify for yourself the unbelievably shocking and horrific truth about commercial pet food.

Rendering Plants

Commercial canned and kibbled petfoods are made primarily from the leftover waste materials from the production of human food. Chief among these materials is what comes from places known as rendering plants. If you’ve ever read the label of a can or bag of pet food and seen phrases such as "meat by-products," "meat meal," or "meat and bone meal," what you’re looking at are some carefully chosen and seemingly innocuous euphemisms for what are in fact the rather more sinister end products that come from the rendering process.

A rendering plant, if you’ve never heard of such a thing, is a place where every bit of slaughterhouse waste that’s not fit for human consumption ends up..among other things.

The REAL List of Ingredients

Other things that end up at rendering plants – and bear in mind that this is just a partial list - are things like rotten grocery meats and other retail food refuse that has passed its expiration date, including its Styrofoam and plastic packaging. Used grease from restaurant deep fryers and grease traps, road kill, dead zoo animals, diseased, cancerous and worm infested entrails and body parts, and what are called 4D livestock, right along with their pesticide impregnated ear tags, are also all fodder for rendering plants.

4D livestock refers to those animals that don’t make it all the way to slaughter because they’re either diseased, disabled, dying or already dead. And as difficult as it may be to believe, there is also evidence that the bodies of at least some of those domestic cats and dogs euthanized at kill shelters and veterinarians also end up being sent to rendering plants, often wrapped in plastic bags with their pesticide infused flea and tick collars still strapped around their necks. No one at the rendering plant stops to remove either the plastic bags or the flea collars, which are processed right along with the dead bodies.

Now remember, these are just some of the items that make their way to these rendering plants. Astonishing, isn’t it?

Highly Processed & Cooked To Death

If you were to step inside a rendering plant, what you’d find, after you got past the intensely putrid stench of rotting, decayed flesh, would be a set of huge augers turning inside a pit. And it’s into that pit that the carcasses, diseased bits and pieces of flesh, bone and offal, grease, rotten food, styrofoam, plastic, pesticide ear tags, dead companion animals, flea collars and other waste materials are thrown, to be slowly ground and chipped together into a foul pulp. That pulp is then cooked at very high temperatures, which destroys virtually whatever limited nutritive value the stuff may have ever had to begin with, until all the fat rises to the top and is skimmed off. This skimmed product is called tallow, or animal fat, and is another byproduct of the rendering process that’s often found among the ingredients in most all commercial pet foods. After the fat is skimmed, the remaining muck is put into a hammer mill press to remove any excess moisture, and then pulverized into a powdery grit. This overcooked, highly processed end product is what’s known as the familiar meat and bone meal, and this lifeless stuff is what you’ll find forms the basis of most all commercially manufactured pet foods.

Huge pet food conglomerates regularly combine this dead crud with a bunch of cheap grains or grain by products, such as mill floor sweepings and leftovers from breweries in the form of brewers rice or other spent grains to make their products. They then throw in a few essential nutrients to make up for the lack thereof in the lifeless refuse they’re using as main ingredients, and can it or dry and extrude it into bags of kibble. Then they dress up the whole cheap sordid mess with some very clever packaging, marketing and advertising campaigns. What they end up with are the makings of a very profitable end product indeed.

Is this really a formula fit for a carnivore?

Follow The Money

When these wealthy mega-corporations take some of their profits, which they do regularly, and make some nice hefty donations to schools of veterinary medicine, sponsor classes on so-called pet nutrition, and woo young vet students right from the start of their education with gifts, perks and other incentives, these companies are ensuring that they'll have thousands of very credible, built-in sales people to dispense their wares for decades to come.

The bottom line? The sale of commercial pet food is nothing less than a monumental travesty upon the good health of domesticated animals worldwide. This stuff simply is not what carnivores like cats were designed to eat. The pet food industry is a massive racket that’s done an unbelievably good job of convincing the veterinary community and the general public alike, that our carnivorous house pets should be eating a what amounts to steady diet of dead, lifeless junk food – and that it’s good for them no less! – when in fact this is an utter lie. The truth is that ideally, carnivores were made to consume raw whole prey type animals, and barring that ideal, what they truly require to thrive is a variety of whole raw meats, meaty bones and organs.

When you truly consider the consequences of forcing our carnivorous companions, generation after generation, to go against their nature by eating a steady diet of over processed, cooked junk food, is it any wonder that they’re suffering from so many chronic health ailments in this day and age?

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Disclaimer

Although a diet of whole raw foods based on Nature's prey model is the most natural, healthy way for our carnivorous companion animals to eat, it is not a cure-all for any or all ailments, nor should it be considered as such. If your pet is ill you are advised to seek out the services of a professional pet health care provider. The material contained on this website is the author's opinion and is shared for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing written herein is intended or should be considered as veterinary advice, and the author assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse by the reader of this information.