Pet Food Ingredients

The list of pet food ingredients is seemingly endless. No other list of ingredients has recently come under fire as tragically and consistently as the list of pet food ingredients that may be found in dog and cat foods that are being used all across the United States. The Menu Foods scandal highlighted how some pet food recipes include a list of fillers that – while edible and digestible for the pet – may not always be healthy. Add to this that the use of fillers inevitably leads to the search for the least expensive ingredients, and the pet food recipe for disaster was born.

With the newfound attention being paid to pet food ingredients, it is interesting that concerned pet owners are finding out that recipes for pet food consistently include peanut hulls – not the actual peanuts themselves, but instead the shells that would ordinarily be wasted – soy, weeds, straw, wheat, and even feathers! While some cases might be made that feathers may contain proteins and other nutrients that do provide the dietary fiber an animal needs, natural pet food recipes are thankfully devoid of such fillers – which others are discarding as trash – and instead quality dietary fibers sources, such as millet, oats, and oatmeal are being used.

What has enraged pet owners, who might not have been aware of the differences between the ingredients used in home made pet foods recipes, holistically made pet foods, and commercially mixed formulas, is the fact that while fillers make up a big portion of the overall formula, they are actually not considered as having any nutritional value at all. Thus, they do little more than adding bulk, mass, and substance to a pet food that might otherwise be little more than a small morsel indeed.

While wheat gluten was the culprit in the pet food ingredients disaster involving the Menu Foods plant, other fillers have been known to cause feline urinary tract ailments and other conditions which necessitate expensive veterinary treatments and extended stay at veterinary health clinics. Thus, some pet lovers have taken to coming up with homemade pet food recipes and while this is most certainly a laudable endeavor, it must be remembered that there is more to mixing pet food ingredients than cooking up some chicken. Holistic pet food recipes which are commercially available throughout the United States contain organic pet food ingredients specified at 2007 meetings of the governing bodies overseeing the use of organic ingredients.