It never ceases to amaze me how people will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a pet dog, and then spend as little as possible to feed it. Beneful? A bunch of corn meal where the only named proteins are chicken by-product meal (which is basically ground rendered carcasses after the muscle meatâs been taken for more profitable products, with some small proportion of organ meat) at #2 and beef (which must be muscle meat) at #7 by weight. Not to say that one should expect the cheap supermarket pet food to be actively harmful⌠but as a rule I avoid inexpensive mass market foods like the plague because theyâre a nutritional mess. And when the bulk-sourced filler from some overseas producer starts making animals sick, you can bet itâs way more likely to be the really cheap stuff.
Hint: if the first (primary) ingredient of your kibble is a grain and not a named protein, youâre buying crappy food. Corn, wheat flour, brown rice, and pearled barley are fillers and empty carbs. By contrast, a good kibble ration will have named protein sources as its primary ingredient by weight (chicken, duck, turkey, beef, fish, etc. and rendered meals of those proteins which contain ground bone and organs of specified protein sources) and present in 2-3 of the top ingredients at minimum. The ration for my pups has 4 of the top 7 ingredients as named proteins, and if you want to get really persnickety you can feed kibble that doesnât contain grain (legumes, potato, and sweet potato usually take their place). I also mix in some canned food that, honestly, Iâd pour in a bowl, heat, season with salt, and have for lunch in a pinch. It costs me about $50 a month for 40 pounds worth of dog, which isnât exorbitant. Way less than what I pay to put meals in my own food-hole.
Iâm sure the BARF folks will come out of the shadows to jump on this, but I wouldnât recommend a raw diet for an inexperienced pet owner. However, with even a modicum of forethought and planning anyone can feed a quality dry ration.
Interestingly enough, one of the possible sources of the poisoning is from molds in the grains. The price may have gone up over the past few years, but switching my pups to a basic fish-based grain-free kibble a few years back produced noticeably better results.
Just look back to the 2007 melamine recall to see all the fancy-label brands from the national brands using substandard crap. If Ekanuba and Evo end up on the same list as OlâRoy (Walmartâs finest), you know youâre being ripped off.
Also, Dick Van Pattenâs brand may test all their foods for contaminants, but it gave my dogs the worst shits of their lives.
Sounds like what happened to my dog about 5 years ago. And fuck me, his other owner was feeding him that food.
I see what youâre saying, dude, but Iâd like to live in a world were people can buy something labeled âdog foodâ that doesnât fucking kill their dogsâŚ
In fairness, the domestication and evolution of dogs from wolves has always been about us feeding them the most worthless garbage from our kitchens. Iâm not saying people shouldnât treat their pets well or ethically, but thatâs just the wretched history of it. The reality is we use protein thatâs cheap and plentiful and wonât piss people off. Itâs kind of like when there is chicken or beef in cat food. You know a cat ainât taking down livestock in the wild anytime soon. Tell someone youâre starting a mouse and sparrow farm to make cat food and PETA will show up and wreck your shit. Thatâs why a lot of cat food these days is starch pellets sprayed with protein slurry.
Even after reading the original article I canât figure out if theyâre talking about the dry Beneful or the canned kind. Does anyone have this info? My two dogs have been eating the kibble and thank god they arenât showing any signs of sickness but this scares the daylights out of me.
Ok, after some Googling it looks like the Original kibble has tested for mycotoxins. First thing tomorrow I am buying new food & throwing the Beneful out!
In fairness, what we bring into out kitchens in the first place isnât what it used to be.
Mycotoxins are nasty things. Theyâre what caused most cases of âpossessionâ and âwitchcraftâ since they have some very nasty effects on people. It was especially bad in colonial america, where people were often growing European grains in a climate that didnât suit it. The pioneer lifestyle meant that you couldnât just chuck out the grain if it had a bit of mould, since youâd starve. Itâs also really hard to stop them and one of the main reasons for using fungicides.
Iâd guess that dogs generally arenât used to a diet of grains (being carnivores and all) and have had much less time to adapt defences than humans. Couple that with dog breeding that doesnât give a damn about the health of an animal and youâd expect dogs to suffer badly when exposed to low levels of mycotoxins.
The symptoms sound like acute poisoning rather than chronic effects, so that would fit mycotoxins too - rather than some other ingredient.
Since grain fodder for dogs is the crappy stuff that isnât fit/desirable for humans, I would expect storage conditions to be similarly second-rate. It only takes one dodgy grain store and you could spread mycotoxin across a lot of food batches.
This is going to suck for Purina, because they donât just make pet food. They also feed the wild animals at the zoo, and a lot of farm animals too. You can bet farmers are going to pay close attention to a story like this - they arenât stupid, and their livelihood could be at stake. Itâs going to take a while to earn back that trust.
So this was for Beneful; what about Benefiber?
Howâs about feeding dogs what theyâre supposed to eatâŚ?! Yâknow, meat ânâ bones ânâ marrow ânâ stuffâŚ?
People seem to have forgotten that dogs are wolves, and that cats are basically miniature lions. Every animal (and weâre animals, too, something vegans seem to forget - accidentally or otherwise) has a dietary genetic blueprint, and you donât see wolves and lions chewing down on grass, do youâŚ?!
The myth that humans need a high-carb/low-fat diet seems to have pervaded vet psyche, too, and our pets are suffering from the same diet-related diseases that we do because of it.
This is bound to be controversial, but Iâd ban vegans from keeping non-herbivorous pets; itâs one thing for them to destroy their own health by eating a, virtually-nutrient-free diet, but itâs quite another for them to force that diet on a pet - or a child. Unless they can prove the pet - or the child - will be fed an appropriate diet - otherwise itâs abuse. Vegans claim theyâre vegan because theyâre against animal cruelty, but I can think of a good few cases where vegans have been indicted for pet and child abuse.
Humans are the only animal species to deny themselves a healthy diet because itâs âcruelâ. When was the last time a lion quit mid-hunt and thought, âHang on a minute! Zebra have a right to live, too! Iâm so evil for eating them, I think Iâll just munch the veldt like they doâ.
Iâm afraid I simply canât understand the vegan mindset, and itâs not for want of trying. Especially when they do things like this:
Thatâs a vegan dog - looks a picture of health, doesnât heâŚ?
I wonât get into your misinformed comments about veganism in general, but I will say that Iâve known plenty of vegans and not one has so much as considered feeding their pets (cats, usually) a vegan diet. Theyâd be the first ones calling the SPCA for that poor dryer dog.
Yeah. Itâs better.
I added emphasis there because, as a BARF guy, Iâd like to preemptively come to your defense in case there are those who want to jump on your comment. Choosing a BARF diet was not something my family did lightly or without a lot of careful research and planning. It also hasnât been a static thing. Weâve had to make adjustments, and have sometimes supplemented it with high-end canned food.
Any BARF folks who want to get foodier than thou are missing the fact that youâre clearly paying close attention to what youâre feeding your pets.
Iâve gotten to the point where I only really shop in four of the 12 aisles at a typical grocery store because all the other aisles are filled with digestible non-food. Donât think that the pet food aisle is any different from this equation. Newsflash: Mainstream dog food is rubbish, just like cereal, frozen dinners, most canned food, canned soups, crackers, cookies, chips, white bread, sodaâŚ
What does this even mean? Of course itâs food. Canning, freezing, and preserving have been around for centuries at this point. Itâs not like itâs untested technology. Out modern diets are extremely nutritious, the only problem seems to be we get too much out of our food. Unless you want to go back in time to a period when most Americans got their energy from a diet high in sugar, and suffered massively from deficiencies, or before Sinclair wrote The Jungle, or when when we were using lead as an artificial sweetener. Iâd say weâve got it pretty good.
Interesting, however be careful about getting too fancy with your dog food selection. I recently switched from a high priced fancy no-grain filler dog food that was purchased at a local store to science diet at my vets recommendation. My dogs energy has doubled and all her digestive issues went away. Many of these high protein brands have weird ingredients that can trigger low level allergies in pets. Basically, I am now a walking advertisement for science diet. And pumpkin⌠plain canned pumpkin for upset dogs.
