petfood

[S]

The pet food industry, a billion-dollar, unregulated operation, feeds on the garbage that otherwise would wind up in landfills or be transformed into fertiliser. The hidden ingredients in a can of commercial pet food may include roadkill and the rendered remains of cats and dogs. The pet food industry claims that its products constitute a "complete and balanced diet" but, in reality, commercial pet food is unfit for human or animal consumption.

"Vegetable protein", the mainstay of dry dog foods, includes ground yellow corn, wheat shorts and middlings, soybean meal, rice husks, peanut meal and peanut shells (identified as "cellulose" on pet food labels). These often are little more than the sweepings from milling room floors. Stripped of their oil, germ and bran, these "proteins" are deficient in essential fatty acids, fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants. "Animal protein" in commercial pet foods can include diseased meat, roadkill, contaminated material from slaughterhouses, faecal matter, rendered cats and dogs and poultry feathers. The major source of animal protein comes from dead-stock removal operations that supply so-called "4-D" animals - dead, diseased, dying or disabled - to "receiving plants" for hide, fat and meat removal. The meat (after being doused with charcoal and marked "unfit for human consumption") may then be sold for pet food.

Rendering plants process decomposing animal carcasses, large roadkill and euthanised dogs and cats into a dry protein product that is sold to the pet food industry. One small plant in Quebec, Ontario, renders 10 tons (22,000 pounds) of dogs and cats per week. The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture states that "the fur is not removed from dogs and cats" and that "dead animals are cooked together with viscera, bones and fat at 115° C (235° F) for 20 minutes".

this was an article written in the late 90's...but the issue remains the same and often not addressed..read this rest of the article here..
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/petfood1.html

[chrissie]

thats terrible! i don't know what to do now! i can't afford to buy the actual meat for my cat but i don't want to buy the processed crap now. shall have to have a think.

[jaunty albatross]

chrissie,

In the wilderness, wild cats kept the bird population in balance as well as
rodents and whatever. Today, the wilderness is on its way out and
everything is produced for profit, absolutely everything, as the article
informs us; yet some species are so close to extinction they only exist
as pets. Personally, I don't keep any because the emotional drain of
responsibility amid an insanely destructive society is too much for me.
Yet, for many people whose children have grown up, or have none, a pet's
unconditional love is as precious as a child's, even while they ignorantly
feed them packaged industrial waste.

The answer to this dilemma is the one nobody wants to hear - reduce the
human population, make room for a vast and healthy wilderness and
return planet Earth to her natural order. Then your pets will have an
alternative home to go to, if and when they decide.

[chrissie]

oh i agree with you on the human population thing. the world is far to overpopulated and if your really think about it thats is linked to most of the other problems in the world. did you know that the human population has grown from 1 billion people to 6.4 billion people since 1900's its absolutely astonishing! but no one will do anything about it as it is unethical to kill people. it is in the main unethical to stop people from having childern so what do we do?

but what you said about the pets having somewhere else to go... do you think they would survive on their own? i don't. they're too domesticated.

[jaunty albatross]

chrissie,

In ancient times a tribal person would befriend a wild animal, but it would
still be wild. Did you see Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves"? It was
like that. The wolf actually adopted him. Jack London also wrote about a
very big "tame" dog that eventually decided to go back into the wilderness
to find a mate and breed. But you're right, today people have made their
inbred pets so weak and dependent they could never survive in the
wilderness. That's because pets have become a big business as the
wilderness shrinks every day. How about "Silent Running" with Bruce
Dern, see that? I like intelligent science fiction.

Family planning is a peaceful way of regulating the number of people, no
need for violence. On the other hand, abortion is violent, but nobody can
stop it, so better to regulate that too.