Veterinary Nutrition

The first baked dog biscuits were invented by an American electrician named James Spratt who was in London trying to sell a lightning rod. Having noticed the boats throwing compressed waste foods onto the docks and watching the dock animals scurry to eat them, he decided to try to make a more healthy treat from the same products and market it. He blended wheat meals, vegetables, beetroot and meat and called it “Meat Fibrine” and began marketing it in 1860. F.H. Bennett Biscuit Co. began producing Milk Bone biscuits in 1907, made of meat, milk, food minerals fortified in liver oil, wheat germ and irradiated yeast to provide essential vitamins for dogs. Ken-L-Ration brand was born in 1922, causing some conflict by utilizing horsemeat, but palatability eventually won the consumer over. Gaines Food Co. came along in 1925 and brought about the processed dry meal dog food formulas.

In the late 1920’s, the veterinary profession turned its attention to pet food, finally introducing the dog’s nutritional needs into the scheme of things. Nabisco, having acquired Milk Bone, strove to educate the dog owners on the nutritional needs of dogs to drive sales up in the early 1930’s. And in 1935, the various producers banded together to form the first commercial pet food association to “develop a better liason with federal and state regulatory agencies.” By then, the ingredients list had broadened to include meat by-products, soybean meal, barley, rice, brans, green bone, vegetables, cod liver oil and charcoal.

WWII nearly decimated the canned dog food production due to the shortage of metals to make the cans but by 1960 canned food sales had recovered well to hold 60% of all pet food sales, by volume, with total pet food sales topping $200 million by 1950. In 1957, Ralston Purina was formed and introduced expanded dog food (liked popped corn), attaining greater palatability by spraying on a fat coating at the end of production. This expanded food resulted in larger bags weighing the same, using a perception of equal content for the same dollar.

By 1959, pet food accounted for double the amount of grocery store volume (or shelf space) then breakfast foods and baby foods, two products types that had never been surpassed. The competition had truly begun! In 1960, Hills and Hartz entered into the market in two untapped areas, prescription foods and treats. Also General Foods Gaines Burgers patented a new product called “semi-moist”. During this decade, total sales passed the billion dollar mark as giants amassed their financial, political, and economic powers to push national distribution and competition went from regional to nation-wide.

A Look at today's “high quality” pet food…

While many things have continued to grow, with the pet food industry topping $15 billion by 2005, many other things have stayed constant-the ingredients. All of the contents of conventional pet foods, with some start-ups of “organic” or “natural” pet food companies being the exception, are ingredients that are the refuse or “by-product” of the human food industry. All have failed USDA inspection. By-products are combination of pieces and parts thrown out after processing/trimming. Meats are from the “4-D” sources – dead, dying, diseased, discarded. This includes euthanized animals! And euthanized companion animals and road kill! This also includes parts of animals not even deemed edible – beaks, feathers, hair, feet, hooves, heads, etc. In today’s food industry, 100% of the product (plant or animal) is utilized in some way and the end of the line is the pet food industry. The industry has slowly moved over to higher levels of grain, utilizing diseased or spoiled grains and the waste from any human food processing. And as the ingredients fell, so has the palatability, creating a challenge to the pet food industry. But, by adding various chemicals as preservatives, color enhancers, flavor enhancers, or spraying on the rancid pour-off restaurant grease and other waste fats and oils, the pet food industry has figured out a way to fool the pet to eat something it would otherwise refuse. Add into it those chemicals used in any part of the “ingredient’s life” before getting dumped into the pet food industry, and the chemical exposure becomes awful. They then top it off with synthetic supplements and call it “complete and balanced”.

A big thing to remember is that the pet food industry does not have to provide ingredients that are bio-available and digestible to the pets consuming their “foods”. When we look at those factors, we not only have to consider the source of the ingredients and the quality, but we must realize that all proteins are not created equal. With the large shift to grain-based proteins, we have to be realistic as to amino acid content, ratios, etc. We also need to consider these carbohydrates in a number of ways. Most primarily-carnivorous animals have little to no actual carbohydrate nutritional requirement and overloading them with carbs have the same nutritional issues it does with the human. Also, the source of the carbohydrate and its digestibility must be factored in. Carbs such as potato, rice, oat, and matured barley can be fairly readily digested in the stomach of the carnivore. But, carbs such as the grain commonly used, corn and wheat, digest very little in the stomach and must pass down into the large intestine to be fermented by the organisms there to extract any energy. This is past the point of most absorption, but energy can be extracted.

This grain fermentation does, however, change to pH in the gut and usually cause much of the beneficial probiotic organisms to perish. And it also creates a HUGE amount of heat that the animal has to dissipate somehow. Also, the dried grain-based foods consume a large amount of the body’s water, dehydrating other areas creating possible disease or complicating factors in these remote areas. (You can’t cook rice without water!) So tears diminish, saliva thickens, feces becomes concrete-like, skin dries up, joint fluid diminishes, urine is forced to concentrate causing precipitations at the higher concentrations. Are we seeing the trickle-down effect of this type of digestion as well as the various disease states it could cause or at least exacerbate?

This slippery slope just continues with the fats. What is the source? Are they rancid, therefore having no antioxidant capacity or other vital roles? And when we look at synthetic vitamins, are they really doing the job of the natural ones; acting as cofactors to digestion and cell membrane binders for nutrient transfer?

So…What are our choices?

Starting from the worst (if we can even differentiate), the discount pet food lines like Old Roy and WalMart begin our climb. Gauranteed, you get what you pay for. Moving up to the pet store and grocery store varieties – possibly “better” than the worst, but still grain-based, refuse ingredients – Iams, Purina, Eukanuba, etc. Often the only thing separating these from the last category is marketing ploys. Next up are the veterinary brands, ingredients from still a little higher up the refuse pile – Precise, Hills, IVD, etc. Please note that all of these foods were part of the recalls of ’06-’07 and will always be prone to it in the future based on their ingredients sources.

Our next choice is better, but this too can be very misleading and misrepresented. There is a growing market for diets that are “natural” and “organic” but these words can be highly misused by placing them in the names of companies, thereby avoiding actually having to be these things. So investigation into the companies and into EACH of their products is a must. IMHO, these companies, Innova, Pinnacle, Merrick, California Natural, Solid Gold, Blur Buffalo, and Orajen to name a few, are often our best options due to the convenience of the bag or can and the quality of ingredients as well as the growing variety of meat sources to meet all of the needs of the various breeds we’re trying to feed. (Yes, the Alaskan dogs DO, very often, need a different food than the lap dogs of Europe!)

Our final choice, that of the balanced, fresh, home-prepared or even raw diets, is superior to these commercially prepared diets, but often this option has too many pitfalls. The clients must be dedicated, the vet must be willing to take on a lot of nutritional counseling to the clients, and when the clients fails to follow through 100% (and they may not tell you when they cheat), the pet has to deal with the radical changes and any health issues that go with that. And even this market is opening up into prepared, frozen, raw diets, but many are meant as supplements to a diet and are not balanced, so work can be involved there as well. However, this can be done very successfully, with a lot of work and dedication from all parties involved, and can be a blessing to many pets’ lives. Standard Process has produced a line of supplements to aid in this home preparation. Feline and Canine specific "Whole Body Support" can take away the burden of "balancing" the diet and can let the owners keep the ingredients list more simple.

When trying to assimilate all of the information out there about companion animal nutrition, one should really refer back to the first few paragraphs of this paper and realize that ALL of our current nutritional “information” in veterinary medicine has come about since the advent of commercially produced, refuse, grain-based pet foods. I feel that our nutritional knowledge is really having to start all over again, using our basic knowledge of what these pets would eat if the human factor were removed. We can’t possibly do worse than the current pet food situation!!! I estimate that 50% of pet health problems are exacerbated or even caused by our current pet foods – so ask yourself how much the current, cheap pet food REALLY costs!

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