April 23, 2007 at 18:48:36

You Are What You Eat: The Politics of Pet Food

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By John R Moffett (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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So what caused the animal sickness and death, and where did it come from? Some investigators have noted that ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in anti-freeze, does cause acute kidney failure in animals. Many pets die every year from drinking anti-freeze drained out of car radiators because it has a sweet smell and taste. However, it does not seem likely that sufficient levels of ethylene glycol could get into pet foods.

As such, it seems very likely that the actual culprit has still not been found. It may turn out to be melamine, but more likely it will turn out to be something else not yet identified. In either case, the FDA would very much like Americans to think that the situation is well in hand. It is far from well in hand, and in fact, the FDA is overwhelmed, underfunded and understaffed. It is also being hamstrung by an administration that despises government oversight of business.

click here

So what can you do? Make your own pet food. It is more time-consuming than opening a can or dumping some kibble in a bowl, but a varied and nutritious diet based on human-grade foods will greatly increase the chances that your pet will have a healthy diet, and a long life. Dogs and cats are fully domesticated animals, and have evolved over thousands of years along side people, eating left-over scraps of food. They are well adapted to a human-centered diet, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just wrong.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/04082007/nhnews-08sun-petfood.html

http://www.sunherald.com/160/story/31845.html

It is critically important to note that the problem isn’t limited to the food your pet eats - there are serious problems with the food you eat too. It’s the same functionally deficient FDA that is supposedly watching out for you and your family by inspecting foods produced in the US and those imported from other countries. There have never been so many food producers as there are now, and in modern times there has never been less FDA action. As this situation worsens, people are getting sick from contaminated spinach, peanut butter, and now new cases have been reported, again, about people getting sick from e-coli tainted beef:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/21/BAGPGPD9GI6.DTL

It goes further - it has been reported that livestock have been fed large amounts of animal feed which was contaminated with melamine, or whatever unidentified toxic substance has been killing pets, thus putting people at risk from the “pet food contamination problem”. By eating animals, people are thus subjected to the animal food stream.

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Eating less meat, and more organic produce is a great way to improve your health, and reduce your exposure to potentially toxic compounds in the food supply. Dogs also do very well on a diet rich in rice, vegetables, oatmeal, eggs, and other non-meat items, but cats need to eat mostly meat. Both cats and dogs should be given appropriate amounts of calcium and vitamin supplements if they are getting human food.

While the human food stream is far from perfect, it is still substantially better than the animal food stream.

You are what you eat. So be highly vigilant about what you, your family, and your pets eat.

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www.factinista.org; www.n-acetylaspartate.com

Dr. John Moffett is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com, and is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area. Dr. Moffett has published numerous scientific articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett's main area of research (more...)

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