Just another reason to feed a raw diet.
http://www.bullmarketfrogs.com/2014/...s-in-pet-food/
When I first wrote an article years ago stating that some pet food companies were using the rendered remains of euthanized pets in their food (under the ingredient designation “meat and bone meal”), I got some pretty nasty email from people telling me I was either insane, or a liar.
For those who were still on the fence, here*s a just released video of AAFCO*s president finally admitting, on camera, that it*s allowable (and, in fact, fairly common practice) for rendered pets to end up in pet food.
AAFCO, by the way, is short for The Association of American Feed Control Officials, and is the regulatory body that sets guidelines for pet food and pet food ingredients in the USA. They could quite easily ban the use of rendered pets as acceptable for inclusion in pet food * but they don*t, because pet food companies value the cheap protein count that comes from rendered meat and bone meal.
What else can be rendered and made into “meat and bone meal”? Euthanized pets, road kill, expired grocery store meat (including the packaging), kill floor detritus, dead stock… etc.
Ethical considerations aside (and they are numerous, in my opinion), rendered pets (and horses) bring something else along with them * trace amounts of the chemicals used to kill them.
This is no minor matter * the Veterinary Industry takes this risk seriously enough to have studied barbiturate levels in pet foods, and to have assessed them as a risk to pets who consume them. Trace barbiturates consumed by pets create a tolerance level which has decreased overall effectiveness of barbiturates, making dosing pets increasingly difficult for veterinarians. Additionally, the chemicals used in euthanasia are, obviously, deadly.
Dr. Patty Khuly has an excellent article on this topic here *
http://www.petmd.com/blogs/fullyvett...iturates-10474
The truth about pet foods and rendering | petMD
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