Don’t shoot me but I’m not fond of the euthanized pets in food argument

I have to confess, the news that euthanized dogs and cats might wind up in Fido and Fluffy’s dinner sure gets your attention.  It got mine, years ago, when I first read Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food by Ann Martin.

That book was well-researched and Ann Martin’s facts were accurate.  You can validate by looking at the website for the national magazine for the rendering industry.  (I don’t want to attract their attention by providing click-throughs from this blog;  google on them and you’ll find them). This is the industry that takes all kinds of waste, including waste from slaughterhouses and dead animals from shelters, boils it and applies chemicals, and turns it into “by-products”.  They have an article or two justifying their free pickup of euthanized cats and dogs as a service to the community and cautioning renderers not to make the mistake that SOME renderers have made, that is, sold the rendered cats and dogs to the pet food industry.

I know, it shocked me when I read it “from the horse’s mouth”, so to speak. 

BUT… that was years ago, and the rendering industry makes a good argument that they really DO need to render cats and dogs and unusable parts from slaughterhouses.  It’s impossible to dispose of the hundreds of millions of tons per year by burning or burying it, so you render it.  But rather than go into pet foods, they claim that rendered pet materials go to fish food and garden fertilizers.

It’s an unpleasant truth.

Here’s my complaint.  There’s an article published this week, Pentobarbital is Killing Eagles But the FDA Says It’s Safe for Pets, discussing this issue as if it were new.  Holistic pet food companies, including my favorites, often market their products by educating people that rendered pets COULD be in any of the pet foods that contain by-products. 

I’ve used the argument myself.  It’s especially possible if the pet food contains anything called “meat” or “animal”, such as “meat by-products” or “animal digest”.  By law, the manufacturer has to name the meat IF he knows it, so if you don’t see chicken or turkey or beef or fish… if your pet’s food says “meat”… hmmmm…. what animal is that?  (It’s most likely horse or a blend of different animal’s by-products).

But the “studies” and FDA reports and Fish and Wildlife news stories are old.  I think it’s just more marketing and hype from people who WILL make money if you read their story and click through to their website.  What I want to know is:  Where is a story from 2008 saying that sampled pet foods still show traces of pentobarbitol (the drug used to euthanize cats and dogs)?  I’ve searched, I’m not seeing one.

Here are stories from legitimate sources that I *have* found.  Note the dates.

Bald Eagle Poisoned After Eating Animal Carcass – US Fish and Wildlife Service, 4/25/2000

A search for further “pentobarbitol” and “euthanized” news stories on the Fish and Wildlife website showed exactly… ONE… article, and it is eight years old.

1998 – 2000 Chart from FDA showing confirmed presence of pentobarbitol in named pet foods

Now, one could argue that the FDA is falling down on the job by not continuing to test the pet foods.  I believe that the better pet foods are taking no chances on having unhappy consumers and they are NOT buying “meat” if there is any chance that it’s euthanized cats and dogs.

Call me naive.  But give me a more current source.

Until then, go with what we DO know:  Holistic foods with real meats, not by-products, and without the corn and wheat grains, are what you want to feed your pets.  Why?  Because in nature, they don’t eat corn and wheat and they don’t touch the parts of their prey that the pet food companies are putting in as by-products.

Plain.  Simple.  And true.