Friday, January 23, 2009

What is the difference between human grade and pet grade food?

Almost every pet owner wants to care for and nurture their four legged family member properly; providing their dog or cat with a good food is an integral part of that care.
A natural human tendency is to choose a dog food or cat food that looks like ‘people food’; pet owners want to provide their dog or cat the same quality of food they would prepare for any other member of the family. Some pet foods use ‘people food’ type ingredients, others do not. Worse news is discovering which pet foods use human grade/quality ingredients and which use lesser quality pet grade/quality ingredients is not as simply as it seems.
Pet food regulations do not provide pet owners with any laws or rules to guide them to higher quality ingredients or alerting them to lesser quality ingredients. It is almost as if pet food regulations are designed to purposely keep pet owners in the dark.
While some pet food manufacturers use the same quality of ingredients in their foods/treats that you find in your local grocer, others do not. The differences between the two grades of ingredients can be minor, or they can be huge; some pet grade/quality pet foods contain ingredients most would never consider feeding their pet, and as well, provide little quality nutrition. To add insult to injury, the pet food label gives little indication which grade/quality the manufacturer used.
One category of pet grade/quality meat ingredients in pet foods is known as 4D meats; from Dead, Diseased, Dying, and Disabled animals. Sick or dying animals are prohibited for use in human foods. Although the (American) Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act specifically states that no food (human or animal) can contain any diseased animal or any animal that has died other than by slaughter, the FDA ignores Federal law and allows these 4D animals to become pet grade/quality pet food ingredients. The FDA, AAFCO, and every State Agriculture Department believes that as long as diseased, dead, dying or disabled animals have been processed to kill pathogens (rendered), they are safe for pets to consume.
Another consideration of 4D pet grade ingredients is nutritional quality. When you ‘process’ a pet food long enough to kill known pathogens of diseased and dying animals, the nutrition that should be provided to the pet from these meat ingredients is greatly diminished if not completely destroyed.
Despite a lack of nutritional quality, the pet food decision makers believe 4D animals are safe for pets to consume, yet they do NOT provide petsumers with any notice a pet food might or might not contain these inferior ingredients.
One pet food company that only uses human grade ingredients is Eagle Pack. Because of this and also due to the proven benefits of feeding your pets this food we stock the Eagle Pack brand and feed it to all our animals. Eagle Pack uses Organic ingredients wherever possible and if it's not organic the ingredients are free range and pesticide free. They also have prebiotics, probiotics and acidophilus added to their Holistic Select range and are the only pet food that does!
Come in and see us and we can discuss with you the best option for your pets and give you a sample for them to try.
Check out more information regarding pet food and their ingredients at http://www.truthaboutpetfood.com/

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