by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Pet food

Nov 20 2019

Should dogs eat pea and lentil proteins?

Plant proteins for dogs?  I’ve written about this before, but now there’s more.

Contrary to prevailing rumor, dogs are well documented to be able to digest grains.  Whether grains are optimal for dogs is another matter and I sure wish we had some decent research on the question.

What we do have is pet-food makers scrambling to sell pet foods to owners convinced that grains are bad for their dogs.  These products are often made with proteins extracted from peas and lentils.

The FDA has gotten reports that dogs fed such pet foods have developed a form of heart disease called  Canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)

The FDA is investigating whether grain-free pet food could be linked to DCM, and it posts the data on reported cases online.  

When the FDA asks owners what dogs with DCM ate, this is what it finds.

Not displayed here are cases of DCM among dogs eating standard commercial pet food.  Those are listed here.

What causes DCM and why so many cases are associated with plant proteins is not known.  One hypothesis is deficiency of taurine (synthesized from sulfur-containing amino acids) in pea and lentil proteins, but adding taurine to diets does not seem to help.

Pea and lentil farmers have complained to the FDA that its warning is hurting their business.  Pet Food Industry reports that sales of grain-free pet foods have declined since the FDA announcement.

The author of a 2016 book about obesity in pets and conflicts of interest in the veterinary nutrition community, who is also the founder of a plant-based pet food company thinks that plan-based ingredients have nothing to do with this.

While the arguments are raging and the FDA continues investigating, what to feed your pet?

Basic advice (from my book with Malden Nesheim, Feed Your Pet Right,” which is actually an analysis of the pet food industry):

  • If you are using commercial foods, make sure they say they are “complete and balanced” and have been tested at some point.
  • If you are cooking for your pet, make sure your recipe includes the needed nutrients (we give generic recipes in the book)
  • Know that no evidence exists that expensive pet foods are better than cheap ones (that research has never been done)
  • Vary the products you use.  Variety, balance, and moderation work just as well for pets as they do for people.
  • Most important: do not overfeed.  Calories count!
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Aug 7 2019

Want Salmonella in your pet food?  Buy Answers brands.

Since writing two books about pet food in 2008 (Pet Food Politics) and 2010 (Feed Your Pet Right), I haven’t said much about this topic but am inspired to comment by this article in Food Safety News.

If you are a pet food maker, and the FDA finds Salmonella in your products and insists you recall them, what should you do?

A.  Recall the products immediately

B.  Apologize to your customers and promise this will never happen again

C.  Hire a food safety expert to review and revise your food safety procedures

D.  Train all employees to follow food safety procedures diligently

E.  Sue the FDA to allow you to continue selling Salmonella-contaminated pet food

The correct answer?  E, apparently.

Incredible as it may seem, Lystin LLC, the parent of Answers Pet Foods which sells raw meat and poultry, is suing the FDA on Constitutional grounds to allow it to sell foods contaminated with Salmonella. Why?

According to this company, people should be able to feed their pets whatever they like, especially because its brands already carry this warning:

WARNING: NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. THIS PRODUCT HAS NOT BEEN PASTEURIZED AND MAY CONTAIN HARMFUL BACTERIA.

You want to continue buying this pet food?  OK.  You were warned.

Personally, I’d find another brand more committed to the safety of dogs and their owners.

I can’t wait to see who wins this one.

May 1 2019

The latest in lab-based meat: mouse treats for cats?

Ah the wonders of modern technology.

Cats like to catch and eat mice (that what cats do), but if you believe in mouse rights and are appalled at the idea of killing mice for food there is a solution to this problem in the works.

Meet Because Animals, a company devoted to feeding pets “safer and more nutritious foods without harming the environment and other animals.”

How?

Lab-grown, cell-cultured mouse cells made into meat for cat treats. 

These are not yet on the market—regulatory issues are involved—but stay tuned.

And no, you can’t make this stuff up.

 

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Mar 21 2019

Supplements for pets: NutraIngredients-USA.com

NutraIngredients-USA.com has collected articles on this topic into a Special Edition: Supplements for pets

The market for supplements for pets is valued at around $2.6 billion, according to the National Animal Supplement Council (NASC).

Issues driving the market growth include an increasing market share of premium supplements positioned as natural and organic; the rise of obesity/weight management among the nation’s pets; and maintaining the health of older pets, which are living for longer.

In this special edition, we explore the key trends (including CBD!), opportunities, and a couple of brand success stories.

Malden Nesheim and I discuss pet supplements in our book, Feed Your Pet Right (which is actually an analysis of the pet food industry).  Just as with supplements for humans, little evidence exists to demonstrate that supplements do any good for pets.  But they make owners feel like they are doing something useful.  As for CBD for pets?  That may make owners feel better too.

Nov 15 2018

Pet food: a roundup of recent stories

I maintain an active interest in pet food, even though my books on the topic came out a few years ago

Here are some recent items:

  1. Pet food is big business ($63 billion last year).  It brings people into supermarkets and boosts sales.  [OK.  You already knew this, no?]
  2. Evangers, a pet food maker occasionally in trouble over ingredient and food safety problems has been caught with horse meat in its products. It says it doesn’t use horse meat, even though it has a license to use it.  It blames its beef supplier.Private label pet food brands are selling well.   They are cheaper.  For the record: all complete-and-balanced pet foods are required to meet the same nutritional standards and to support dog and cat reproduction, growth, and development (they are like infant formula in that regard).
  3. Food safety issues for humans also mean food safety issues for pets. The CDC is warning people not to consume certain turkey products because of illnesses caused by Salmonella. “Evidence collected by federal officials investigating the illnesses has revealed the outbreak strain in samples from live turkeys and many kinds of raw turkey products, including pet food.”
  4. Raw pet food  continues to raise food safety risks: Rad Cat Raw Diet has been recalled due to Listeria contamination.   A case of human Salmonella illness has been linked to a Darwin’s raw pet food.
  5. And the FDA announces the recall of Nutrisca dry dog food with levels of vitamin D so excessive that they made dogs sick.
  6. Mars Veterinary, the biggest manufacturer of pet foods, is working on some new products made from—get this—lab-grown mouse meat.  No, I did not make this up; I got it from Business Insider.
  7. Wild Earth, Inc., a biotech pet food startup, sells treats made with lab-cultured protein from the koji fungus, Aspergillus oryzae.
  8. The humanification of pet food, says The Atlantic, is nearly complete.
  9. Whole Dog Journal asks this burning question: Should you feed ice cream to your dog? (The short answer is no, but this gives me a chance to praise Nancy Kerns’ admirably sensible advice about dog feeding, care, and training).

You can see why I love writing about pet food.

Jul 31 2018

Dog owners: watch out for grain-free pet foods containing legumes or potatoes as the main ingredients

The FDA is warning dog owners about an observed association of enlarged hearts in animals fed dog foods containing peas, lentils, other legumes, or potatoes as main ingredients (these appear first or second on ingredient lists).  These pet foods are often labeled “grain-free.”

Large breeds are more seriously affected but cases have occurred in medium and small breeds too.

The reason for the association is not known but one possibility is that these diets are low in the amino acid taurine, which is usually present in meat (see note at end).

As Mal Nesheim and I discussed in our book, Feed Your Pet Right, dogs—like humans—do best on a highly varied diet containing many different foods.

The FDA website contains lots of information about pet foods and pet food recalls.

The FDA encourages pet owners and veterinary professionals to report cases of DCM in dogs suspected of having a link to diet by using the electronic Safety Reporting Portal or calling their state’s FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinators. Please see the link below about “How to Report a Pet Food Complaint” for additional instructions.

As for what’s going on here, the New York Times quotes veterinary nutritionist Lisa Freeman:

Contrary to advertising and popular belief, there is no research to demonstrate that grain-fee diets offer any health benefits over diets that contain grains.

The Times also a quotes a veterinarian who feeds his own dog a mainstream commercial pet food:

A lot of people would have qualms because it uses less expensive or nonorganic ingredients…But we’ve seen dogs thrive on these diets.

That is indeed what the research shows.

In our book, Mal and I repeatedly emphasize that pet foods are like infant formulas in that they all have to meet exactly the same nutritional standards.

Whether the sources of ingredients providing those nutrients make any difference to a pet’s health is a mystery.  Why?  Because no pet food company wants to do the obvious, but expensive, experiment: Compare the effects of the cheapest complete-and-balanced pet food to the one made with the highest quality (and most costly) ingredients.

At some point, all complete-and-balanced pet foods were tested to make sure they properly supported growth and reproduction.

Are there critical differences?

In marketing, definitely.  To health?  We just don’t know.

Added note, September 4, 2018

The best discussion of the taurine-in-dogs issue I have seen is this one in Whole Dog Journal by Linda Case.

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Jun 21 2018

Salmonella in Honey Smacks cereal?

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  The latest source of Salmonella is a kids’ cereal, Kellogg’s Honey Smacks.  They may be a good source of vitamin D, but watch out!

This is no joke.  The CDC reports the damage: 73 cases in 31 states, with 24 hospitalizations.

The CDC says you should not eat this cereal.  Period.  You should especially not eat this if its used-by date ranges from June 14, 2018 to June 14, 2019.  Kellogg has recalled packages with this used-by date.

I took this photo on June 16 at Wegmans in Ithaca.  I was surprised to see them on the shelf, but their use-by date was May 19, 2019 so Wegmans must think they are OK.  Even if I habitually bought sugary kids cereals, I’d pick another one until this outbreak is over and gets an all-clear signal.

Recent Salmonella outbreaks have involved pre-cut melon, eggs, dried coconut, pre-made salads, and sprouts.  Food safety lawyer Bill Marler says don’t eat them either.

Outbreaks caused by contamination of commercial boxed products are rare.  Bacteria don’t grow well in dried foods.  The CDC doesn’t discuss how the Salmonella got into the package.

Could honey be the source?  Honey is not sterile, but bacteria don’t grow in it very well (not enough water).

This reminds me of the situation with dry pet foods and treats.  Canned pet foods have been cooked and are sterile until they are opened.

Dry foods are not sterile.  Although the extrusion process heats them enough to kill bacteria, flavors and other additives are sprayed on before they are packaged.  Contamination with Salmonella and other pathogens is a constant problem (Mal Nesheim and I discuss this in our book about the pet food industry, Feed Your Pet Right).

I will be interested to see if Kellogg can find the source of the contamination.

Mar 6 2018

Why so may pet food recalls?

Is it just me or does it seem like there are an unusually large number of pet food recalls this year.

The American Veterinary Medical Association keeps track of them and I am astonished at how many are on the 2018 list—already.

As I look at the list, the 2018 recalls are due to three causes: Listeria, Salmonella, and Pentobarbital.

Dry pet food is not sterile and easily contaminated by pathogens (these can make pets or owners sick).  Pet food manufacturers know this and are supposed to take precautions.

Food Safety News often writes about Salmonella problems in pet foods; it obtains inspection records that nearly always reveal sloppy production practices.

Pentobarbital is another matter entirely.  This is a euthanasia drug.  Euthanized animals are not supposed to be included in rendered meals used in pet foods.  If pentobarbital is present, the manufacturer is not paying attention to the quality of its ingredients (and whoever is doing the rendering is not excluding euthanized animals).

I have a special interest in pet foods, having written two books about it.

Pet foods are a profitable business and lots of companies make them.  It’s a good idea to keep track of the recalls and avoid recalled products.  Stores do not always remove recalled products immediately.

Caveat emptor.

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