The basics to dog food ingredients
Learning the basics to dog food is a must for all dog owners.
Please spend 10 minutes and read this honest and helpful article on the basics to dog food and it's ingredients. Don't worry we left the discussing stuff out, this is more about what is good for them to have and not how bad some companies dog food is.
Pet-nutrition experts say that the best dog food is made from human-grade ingredients like meat, whole grains and vegetables. What you don't want is a lot of filler as the primary ingredients; these are items that have less nutritional benefit. According to the Born Free USA united with Animal Protection Institute website, dogs can absorb almost all the nutrients from white rice, but grains like oats, flour and wheat have almost no nutritional value for dogs. Corn products aren't very valuable either, and peanut hulls have no value at all. Glutens are another group of ingredients that experts say don't provide much nutritional value to dogs, and are a particular concern since 2007's massive recall of pet foods tainted by contaminated wheat and rice gluten from China.
According to reviews, better-quality dog food results in a healthier coat, fewer digestive problems and firmer stools. Since your dog will absorb more nutrients from better-quality dog food, less will be passed as waste.
Dogs love meat and they need protein. Unlike cats, who need high amounts of protein and no carbohydrates at all, dogs need a diet that contains as much as 50 percent carbohydrates. Still, experts say meat should be the first ingredient, followed by healthy carbohydrate sources such as potatoes, or more absorbable grains like rice. If you've read any dog food labels, you might have noticed the term "by-product." Meat by-product consists mainly of animal parts that are not used for human consumption, such as bones, organs, blood, fatty tissue and intestines. If a label says "chicken by-product," all the parts must come from chicken; the same goes for lamb, beef, etc.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to by-products in dog food. Some say that because a dog in the wild would eat the entire animal when killing prey, including skin, organs and bones, some amount of by-products in dog food is just fine. What you don't want, say reviews, is unidentified by-products, often listed as "meat by-products." Experts say this could include zoo animals, road kill and what's often referred to as 4-D livestock (dead, diseased, disabled, dying). Most shockingly, meat by-products can even include euthanized dogs and cats. In 1990 the American Veterinary Medical Association and the FDA confirmed that some pet food companies were using the bodies of euthanized pets as by-products in their foods. It turns out that this practice wasn't widespread, but limited to small rural rendering plants and a few other assorted links in the pet food manufacturing chain. For these reasons, reviews that do approve of some by-products in pet food say that dog owners should look for specific origin, such as chicken by-product or lamb by-product.
Note that in poultry-based dog foods, the term "by-product" is used to identify by-product meals. However, in other types of dog food, by-product meal can be labeled as "meat and bone meal" (MBM) or even "beef and bone meal." This type of labeling is legal, but clearly misleading.
The other -- and prevailing -- school of thought is that by-products should be avoided entirely, and that a dog's diet should contain meat, vegetables and absorbable grains. These critics say that it's simply too hard to know what exactly is included in by-products, and some say that these unwanted animal parts may contain bacteria or even parts from cancerous animals. MBM used in cattle feed is suspected of being the primary agent in the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as "mad cow" disease).
Related to meat by-products is a low-quality ingredient called animal digest, which is the dry or liquid by-product of the meat rendering process. Experts say that while there is meat content in animal digest, it's of little nutritional value as it is not very digestible.
In dry foods, be aware that listing meat at the top of an ingredient list can be misleading, as meat has a high water content that is removed when processed into dry pet food. However, so-called "meat meal" is meat with the water removed, and finding it high up in the ingredient list is a good indication of a high-protein dry food. Again, beware of foods that contain meat and bone meal or beef and bone meal, as those are low-quality ingredients.
Dog food companies are making moves to get away from using artificial preservatives in dog food. Chemicals used as preservatives, like BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin, have been under scrutiny, and many companies are switching to natural preservatives like vitamin C (ascorbate) and vitamin E (tocopherols). Reviews say natural preservatives are much safer.
According to reviews, better-quality dog food results in a healthier coat, fewer digestive problems and firmer stools. Since your dog will absorb more nutrients from better-quality dog food, less will be passed as waste.
Dogs love meat and they need protein. Unlike cats, who need high amounts of protein and no carbohydrates at all, dogs need a diet that contains as much as 50 percent carbohydrates. Still, experts say meat should be the first ingredient, followed by healthy carbohydrate sources such as potatoes, or more absorbable grains like rice. If you've read any dog food labels, you might have noticed the term "by-product." Meat by-product consists mainly of animal parts that are not used for human consumption, such as bones, organs, blood, fatty tissue and intestines. If a label says "chicken by-product," all the parts must come from chicken; the same goes for lamb, beef, etc.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to by-products in dog food. Some say that because a dog in the wild would eat the entire animal when killing prey, including skin, organs and bones, some amount of by-products in dog food is just fine. What you don't want, say reviews, is unidentified by-products, often listed as "meat by-products." Experts say this could include zoo animals, road kill and what's often referred to as 4-D livestock (dead, diseased, disabled, dying). Most shockingly, meat by-products can even include euthanized dogs and cats. In 1990 the American Veterinary Medical Association and the FDA confirmed that some pet food companies were using the bodies of euthanized pets as by-products in their foods. It turns out that this practice wasn't widespread, but limited to small rural rendering plants and a few other assorted links in the pet food manufacturing chain. For these reasons, reviews that do approve of some by-products in pet food say that dog owners should look for specific origin, such as chicken by-product or lamb by-product.
Note that in poultry-based dog foods, the term "by-product" is used to identify by-product meals. However, in other types of dog food, by-product meal can be labeled as "meat and bone meal" (MBM) or even "beef and bone meal." This type of labeling is legal, but clearly misleading.
The other -- and prevailing -- school of thought is that by-products should be avoided entirely, and that a dog's diet should contain meat, vegetables and absorbable grains. These critics say that it's simply too hard to know what exactly is included in by-products, and some say that these unwanted animal parts may contain bacteria or even parts from cancerous animals. MBM used in cattle feed is suspected of being the primary agent in the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as "mad cow" disease).
Related to meat by-products is a low-quality ingredient called animal digest, which is the dry or liquid by-product of the meat rendering process. Experts say that while there is meat content in animal digest, it's of little nutritional value as it is not very digestible.
In dry foods, be aware that listing meat at the top of an ingredient list can be misleading, as meat has a high water content that is removed when processed into dry pet food. However, so-called "meat meal" is meat with the water removed, and finding it high up in the ingredient list is a good indication of a high-protein dry food. Again, beware of foods that contain meat and bone meal or beef and bone meal, as those are low-quality ingredients.
Dog food companies are making moves to get away from using artificial preservatives in dog food. Chemicals used as preservatives, like BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin, have been under scrutiny, and many companies are switching to natural preservatives like vitamin C (ascorbate) and vitamin E (tocopherols). Reviews say natural preservatives are much safer.
To some it up:
- Make sure the food has meat (unless your dog is a vegetarian) as the first ingredient and that it says a kind of meat, but not with (meat name)meal or bone meal this means it can be almost anything.
- If it has by-products then it's best to know that the by-products are from a chicken or cow so it should say beef by-products or chicken by-products. If it just says byproducts it could be dogs or roadkill. (But most likely it's not)
- Corn is o.k. it's just means your dog will poop more and as it's only might have a hard times digesting it.
- Most foods are fine and most dogs will be healthy on them, but some higher end foods have less risk for for diseased meat or causing digestive problems.
Vegetarian dog food
I would also like to throw in that I believe dogs can be vegetarians and be healthy and happy. At this time there is no food or process that has figured out the needs to compensate for not eating meat. Mainly dogs need lots of protein, so I would imagine they will have a soy high protein dog food with added healthy nutrients coming out in the near future. For now you can give carrots for dog treats and find a way to get him protein without meat. Like your own blend with bulk soy from Costco, or mushrooms have high protein.
Chinese legal experts call for ban on eating cats and dogs
Chinese legal experts are proposing a ban on eating dogs and cats in a contentious move to end a culinary tradition dating back thousands of years.
The recommendation will be submitted to higher authorities in April as part of a draft bill to tackle animal abuse.
In ancient times, dog meat was considered a medicinal tonic. Today, it is commonly available throughout the country, but particularly in the north where dog stew is popular for its supposed warming qualities.
In recent years, however, such traditions are increasingly criticised by an affluent, pet-loving, urban middle class. Online petitions against dog and cat consumption have attracted tens of thousands of signatures. Videos showing the maltreatment of farmed dogs have spurred protests at markets where the animals are bought and sold.
But the drafters of the new proposal want far more drastic measures, which would oblige law enforcement authorities to close down thousands of dog restaurants and butchers which supply the meat.
According to the draft, illegal sale or consumption of pets would incur a maximum penalty of 15 days in prison for individuals or a 500,000 yuan fine for businesses. Public security bureaus would be obliged to respond to hotline calls from the public about violations.
"We are proposing that all dog and cat eating should be banned because it is causing many social problems," said Chang Jiwen, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who heads the drafting team.
He said recent murders and thefts related to the dog meat trade showed that it had become a source of tension, while the economic impact of a ban would be small because an increasingly affluent population was less dependent on dog and cat meat.
The proposal reflects changing public opinion and international input. Drafters at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have been consulting for more than a year with Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare.
But the plan for a dog meat ban has stirred up fierce debate between animal welfare groups and defenders of traditional values.
"I support this proposal. Whether you judge this as a question of food security or emotions, there is absolutely no necessity in China for people to eat dogs and cats," said Zeng Li, the founder of the Lucky Cats shelter in Beijing. "We need something more than moral pressure. Beijing's dog restaurants get their meat mainly from vagrant and stolen dogs. In the suburbs, dogs are hung and slaughtered in front of buyers."
Online critics said it was hypocritical to protect only dogs and cats, and that the government should focus on human welfare before protecting animals.
"This is absurd. Why only dogs and cats? How about pigs, cows and sheep," wrote a poster going by the name Mummy on the Xhinua news agency website.
"I hope the experts went to see what laid-off workers and people in rural areas have to eat. They should pay more concern to problems that people really care about," said another contributor under the name Starfish.
Even before the pet meat ban, the draft bill had already provoked controversy. Initial plans for a comprehensive animal welfare law had to be dropped in the face of criticism that human living conditions ought to be the priority at this stage in China's development.
The focus has now been narrowed to prevention of animal abuse, which is defined as inflicting unnecessary pain and brutality. Even so, it is far from certain that the draft will be adopted by the government or the National People's Congress.
Justice was finally served for the 99 St. Bernard dogs
Justice was finally served for the 99 St. Bernard dogs that were abandoned by their owner, nearly one year ago. On October 27th, Mary Collis was sentenced on animal cruelty charges and will serve 18 weeks in jail for leaving her dogs unattended while she went on vacation.
Last November Mary Collis, who is a dog breeder and veterinary technician in the U.K. left for a holiday with her partner. A concerned citizen found the dogs five days later. They were covered in feces and urine and without water of food. That person contacted the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals.)
Inspectors on the scene found the St. Bernards in poor health, many with matted fur and eye problems. All of the dogs were emaciated with their ribs and spines visibly showing. It was apparent they had suffered from neglect well before Collis left for vacation.
On the night of the rescue, one dog had to be euthanized because of neglect and another died the following day at a veterinary clinic.
Since the rescue a total of 14 dogs have died as a result of their ordeal.
The remaining 83 dogs have been adopted by the RSPCA to new families and are dong well.
Collis had declared bankruptcy in May 2007 and she was in the process of being evicted from her property when she left the dogs. Her partner said she was suffering from depression and suggested they go “away on a holiday.”
In addition to her jail time, Mary Collis was also banned from keeping any animals for 10 years.
The RSPCA was pleased with the outcome of the hearing and Inspector Clint Davies said, “I think it sends out the right message to people that they are not going to get away with it. I think it shows complete disregard for the animals.”
Many shelters across the U.S. are facing hard times similar to the ones Collis faced. The poor economy is making money to care for animals scarce. But animal rescue groups such as Pet Rescue, Inc. in Miami chose a different route before closing their doors. That group pulled all of their social networking resources together in order to find new homes for the cats and dogs in their care. Volunteers reached out to rescue agencies and animal loving websites for help. They made a pack not to leave behind any pet.
It is sad that Mary Collis didn’t reach out to rescue groups or the RSPCA for help. Because of her poor judgment, 85 dogs suffered for five days and another 14 dogs died.
At one point Whales where the most intelegent animal on earth
Well they still might be actually: As the annual International Whaling Commission meeting stumbles to a close, unable to negotiate a compromise between whaling opponents and people who’ve killed more than 40,000 whales since 1985, scientists say these aquatic mammals are more than mere animals. They might even deserve to be considered people.
Not human people, but as occupying a similar range on the spectrum as the great apes, for whom the idea of personhood has moved from preposterous to possible. Chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos possess self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. According to a steadily gathering body of research, so do whales and dolphins.
In fact, their capacities could be even more ancient than our own, dating to an evolutionary explosion in brain size that took place millions of years before the last common ancestor of the great apes existed.
“If an alien came down anytime prior to about 1.5 million years ago to communicate with the ‘brainiest’ animals on Earth, they would have tripped over our own ancestors and headed straight for the oceans to converse with the dolphins,” said Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
The idea of whale personhood makes all the more haunting the prospect that Earth’s cetaceans, many of whom were hunted to the brink of extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are still threatened.
At the annual International Whaling Commission being held this week in Portugal, officials failed to curb the continuing killing of some 1,000 whales every year, mostly by hunters from Japan, Norway and Iceland. Many scientists say populations are still too fragile to support commercial hunting or, in the case of Japan, “scientific research” that appears to kill an especially high number of pregnant females.
Mortality from hunting, however, may be the least of the whale’s worries. Industrial pollution has suffused their bodies with heavy metals and toxins. Noise pollution drowns out the vocalizations on which whales rely to find food and navigate. Overfishing punches holes in oceanic webs of life. Whales and dolphins are also accidentally caught in nets and struck by ships.
Such collisions appear to be pushing the North Atlantic right whale to oblivion, and the IWC says that ship strikes “should be reduced to zero as soon as possible.” But though the U.S. has set speed limits off its northeast coast, the World Shipping Council has fought such measures internationally. It’s also possible that Navy sonar tests, which may have caused mass beachings in the Bahamas, are to blame. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on the tests. And though President Obama has noble intentions on ocean policy, pollution and overfishing is a global problem.
In the midst of this, research has continued on whales and dolphins, which have long been difficult to study. Whales can’t be kept in captivity. Scientists require expensive ships and tools that, despite their sophistication, produce relatively low-resolution readings of whale life.
Most findings come from bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales and humpback whales — the species that scientists have painstakingly studied for a few decades, and now continue their work with improved gene sequencing and song analysis tools. In these four species, scientists see considerable social complexity and individual distinction. They talk of whales and dolphins in terms of cultures and societies, and say cetaceans possess qualities of personhood. They say the same is likely true of other species, who simply haven’t been studied yet.
“It’s only due to our lack of knowledge that humans remain this exclusive species,” said Shane Gero, a Dalhousie University marine biologist. “We’re getting a lot of long-term studies in cetaceans, hitting multiple generations, and we’re finally able to get at these questions.” Though there’s still more evidence for primate than cetacean personhood, Gero said accumulating research “will start tipping the scales.”
Gero trained under Dalhousie University biologist Hal Whitehead, who started studying whales in 1977. Researchers from his lab and that of St. Andrews University biologist Luke Rendell, another former Whitehead student, have studied sperm whales around the world. They’re responsible for much of what’s known about the whales’ social behavior, which involves wide variations in group formation, hunting and child-rearing. Groups even appear to communicate in their own unique dialect.
“Based on what we know, I’d guess that cetacean culture is intermediate between humans and chimpanzees. Not in material culture, but in most other respects,” said Whitehead.
Culture is an especially important measure of personhood in whales, since it’s difficult to administer the sorts of tests that have found chimpanzees to be capable of basic math, altruism, laughter and complex communication, the latter of which can be neurologically imaged in real-time.
But if cetaceans can’t take these tests, they have met one critical laboratory benchmark of higher cognition: self-recognition. With Wildlife Conservation Society cognitive scientist Diana Reiss, Lori Marino showed that bottlenose dolphins can use mirrors to investigate marks hidden on their bodies. “When they look in the mirror, they’re saying, ‘That’s me,’” said Marino. “They have a sense of self through time.”
And in a much-celebrated first documented example of tool use in marine mammals, a family of dolphins in Australia uses sponges to hunt.
Cetaceans even surpass most primates in their use of sound. “We’ve known for some time now that the communication systems of these animals is more complex than we can imagine,” said Marino. “People are starting to use some interesting statistical methods to look at their vocal repertoires, and they’re finding structural complexity that suggests there may be something like grammar, syntax, even language.”
Fueling the evolution of cetacean communication is an ability, observed in dolphins, humpback whales and sperm whales, to pass songs and codas between generations and individuals.
“One of the ways in which dolphins are unusual among mammals is their ability to imitate sounds. Most apes are barely able to modify the sounds that they make vocally, based on what they hear,” said Peter Tyack, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “To be able to learn sounds and incorporate them is really important for human communication.”
According to Tyack, the individually distinctive calls of dolphins may even be equivalent to names. “That’s an open research question,” he said.
In addition to cultural evidence, researchers who’ve studied cetacean brains — many of which are among the largest in the animal kingdom — have found highly developed analogues to human structures. Whale brains appear to have undergone massive growth about 30 million years ago, a process linked in primates to the development of complex cognition and culture.
“The parts of the brain that are involved with processing emotion and social relationships are enormously complex, and in many cetaceans even more highly elaborated than in the human brain,” said Marino. “If we assume that the limbic system is doing what it’s doing in all mammals, then something very high-level is going on.”
As for the nature of a whale’s inner life, it’s difficult to say but possible to speculate.
“My strong suspicion is that a lot of sperm whale life revolves around social issues,” said Whitehead. “They’re nomadic, live in permanent groups, and are dependent on each other for everything. Social structure is vital to them. The only constant thing in their world is their social group. I’d guess that a lot of their life is paying attention to social relationships.”
These relationships would be “interestingly different from ours, for a variety of reasons,” continued Whitehead. “There’s nowhere to hide, they can use sound to form an image of each other’s insides — whether you’re pregnant, hungry, sick. In a three-dimensional habitat, it’s probably much harder to say something is mine, or yours, whether it’s a piece of food or a potential mate.”
Tyler Schulz, another researcher in Whitehead’s lab, recently refined a method for linking sperm whale codas to the individual who composed them. That should help researchers get an even better appreciation of personal traits.
“He found that in one group, most of the animals had a similar repertoire of calls, but the mother of a baby had a different one,” said Whitehead. “As we analyze the data, we’ll be able to figure out whether that was the mother’s originally vocabulary, and she was a weirdo, or if maybe that was just baby talk. We all know women who change their vocabularies when they have babies.”
Ex-pet store worker denies drowning rabbits after posting gruesome photo on Facebook
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals joined a protest outside an Akron, Ohio, court today to draw attention to a former pet store employee who allegedly admitted on Facebook to having drowned two injured rabbits.
Liz Carlisle, 20, of Ravenna in northeast Ohio, pleaded not guilty to two counts of animal cruelty at the Akron Municipal Court while about 40 protesters outside held signs that read such things as "Justice 4 the Defenseless," "Bunny Killers Belong Behind Bars," and "Elizabeth Carlisle Deserves Jail Time."
Carlisle's controversy forced Petland to shutter its Akron store, and acknowledge that the rabbits experienced what the chain called horrific mistreatment. "Petland will in no way, shape or form tolerate any abuse of animals in its care. We are outraged of this gross violation of Petland's animal care standards," the company wrote in a news release earlier this month.
Her lawyer, however, says it's all a misunderstanding and that the young woman is actually an animal lover with an odd sense of humor:
Ron Gatts, an Akron attorney representing Carlisle, said the public is unaware of the entire story behind the photograph that prompted the charges against the Ravenna woman.
The image, posted on Carlisle's Facebook page, appears to show her holding a soaked and drowned small black rabbit in each hand. Carlisle is seen smiling in the photo and a comment on the social Internet site says the animals were euthanized through drowning.
''She regrets this. She regrets all of this,'' Gatts said.
Still, he said, the public will take a different look at the former Petland store worker once the facts are aired.
''I think when all the facts come out, I think people will understand who Liz is, not this monster that holds up rabbits and thinks it's a joke,'' he said. ''She doesn't. She takes this very seriously. She is an avid animal lover.''
The Humane Society of Greater Akron originally pressed charges against Carlisle. It was the pet store manager, Carlisle says, who took the gruesome photo of her with the dead wet rabbits, but a humane officer determined that Carlisle worked alone. She is scheduled for a pretrial hearing before Judge Stephen Fallis on Sept. 3.
-- Tony Pierce
Photos: (top) Animal rights activists in Akron, Ohio, protest outside of the Stubbs Justice Center, where Liz Carlisle, the former Petland employee accused of drowning two rabbits at the store, appeared before Judge James Williams during her arraignment on two counts of animal cruelty.
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