Dog Food & Feeding:

The First Step

By Dr. Michael W. Fox

Much pet food research has focused on making the inedible palatable, and the incomplete or non-nutritious ingredients complete, balanced and fortified with synthetic additives. The end result is a sickening chemical feast for pets that this kind of profitdriven science, funded to find efficient ways to recycle slaughterhouse, food and beverage industry wastes, actually applauds. The pet food industry has convinced many veterinarians and veterinary associations that pet foods are not a cause of animals becoming ill, and that cerealbased dry foods are fine for cats.

The big, multinational pet food manufacturers—a subsidiary of our non-sustainable and increasingly toxic agribusiness industry— and still far too many veterinarians, tell people not to feed their pets human food. ‘Dog food is for dogs, cat food for cats—all scientifically formulated and properly balanced for health and maintenance’ is the constant refrain. What goes into many manufactured pet foods are ingredients that food scientists and engineers have put together from the byproducts of the human food and beverage industries and fast-food restaurants that recycle used cooking oil and baked goods into pet food. These kinds of pet foods and pet snacks soaking in sugars, salts and propylene glycol, are akin to the junk, convenience and fast foods that are now being recognized as causing and contributing to a host of costly and disabling diseases in consumers.

I am an advocate of whole, organic foods that are biologically appropriate for the species. Food for Dogs is different from “dog food”—it’s human-quality food, but with fewer grains, or no grains for cats. A generation ago, in my youth, we would get part of our dog and cat food from the local butcher: lights (lungs), green tripe and other nutritious trimmings and organ parts that were fresh and unprocessed. Dogs would have knuckle-bones to chew on, which is the best thing for their teeth and joints, because the cartilage included nutraceuticals like chondriotin and glucosamine, which are the latest discovery to go into manufactured pet food formulations, 60 years later.

When pet food ingredients were whole and simple, so were the nutrition-related maladies and solutions. The most common nutritional problem in those days was secondary nutritional hyperparathyroidism seen as crippling rickets in dogs, an easily corrected lack of calcium deficiency in the diet. Occasional skin problems were fixed with fish oil or linseed oil and Brewer’s yeast.

Now, the multiple, fragmented, depleted, denatured, bleached and once or twice already processed and cooked ingredients— made from byproducts including condemned, diseased animal parts and synthetic additives—make nutrition-related maladies and solutions more complex and costly than ever. For a listing of health problems related to diet, which range from skin allergies and chronic ear and dental problems, to obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and epilepsy, visit www.twobitdog.com/DrFox/. The Web site also has my basic dog food recipe.

Many veterinarians are too charmed by the pet food industry seminars, scientific reports and lavish grants to their veterinary colleges to advance the public’s understanding of nutraceuticals. Some new ingredient miracles, such as Taurine, L-Carnitine and Omega fatty acids, could significantly improve our pets’ lives. The end products of the current system will likely be more special diets, prescriptiononly formulations for specific health problems that arise predominantly from dietary deficiencies, imbalances and related digestive disorders. Most of these health problems would never have arisen given proper nutrition to mother dogs and growing pups, and not over-vaccinating.

The pet food multinationals pour hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising, into support of animal shelters and adoptions, veterinary colleges, lectureships, research, conferences, seminars, cat shows, dog shows and the American Kennel Club. One of the biggest, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, along with two drug companies, gave the American Veterinary Medical Association $4.5 million in 2008 and $5 million soon after to a Canadian veterinary college—we need not wonder why it has taken so long for the connection between pet foods and pet health problems to be acknowledged.

During the debacle of the pet food industry’s massive product recall in 2007 following contamination with fake gluten imported from China, I went back to my pet food files and an earlier report that had been censored and withheld from publication while I was employed by the Humane Society of the United States. I got the support of two other outstanding veterinarians and in 2008 came out with the landmark book: Not Fit for a Dog: the Truth about Manufactured Dog and Cat Food. It is my wish that people begin to take charge of their pets’ health, as well as their own, by understanding the vital connection between good nutrition and physical and emotional well-being. The first step is toward unprocessed and minimally processed whole foods, ideally organically certified, and a nutritionally complete and balanced diet.

For more details on the problems with manufactured pet foods and its adverse effects on companion animals, read Not Fit for a Dog: the Truth about Manufactured Dog and Cat Food by veterinarians Drs. M.W. Fox, E. Hodgkins and M.E. Smart, published in 2008 by Quill Driver Books, Sanger Calif.

For a review of selected dog foods that I find acceptable, go to www.twobitdog.com/DrFox/

About the author

Michael W. Fox, BVetMed, PhD, DSC, MRCVS is a member of the British Veterinary Association and an Honor Roll Member of the American Veterinary Medical Association. He has doctoral degrees in ethology/ animal behavior and medicine from the University of London, graduating from the Royal Veterinary College London in 1962. In 1961 he was awarded the gold medal and Fellowship of the Royal Veterinary College Medical Association for his report on the effects of poor nutrition on the health of working sheepdogs, (published in the J. Small Animal Practice, 5:183-192, 1964). Spending most of his professional life in the US as an advocate for animal health, welfare and rights under the flag of One Medicine, One Earth, he has published more than 40 books and writes the syndicated newspaper column Animal Doctor.