Processed Food...A Slow Poison
Written by JOHN BACKLEY of Meisterhunde Kennels
This article is a result of numerous written letters and phone calls from concerned pet owners as to why our pets do not enjoy good health. Some of the common complaints are lack of energy, skin allergies, flea control, arthritis at an early age, vomiting, epileptic seizures, hyperactivity diet etc. etc. and the big one, why our dogs are dying at such an early age ??
I use Herbs and Homeopathy (Natural Medicine) to treat sick pets, so the thoughts I am putting on paper here are after many years of research and study and working closely with Vets who share my view. I wish to share some of my findings with fellow pet owners.
No doubt you have all heard the saying, :you are what you eat” and that certainly is the case with our pet as well. What our pets ate a hundred years ago was a lot safer, cleaner and better in nutritional value than it is today.
The supermarket and the pet food manufactures do not provide safe food for our pets despite all the clever television commercials that claim their brands are complete. the bagged and canned food billed as complete and a balanced diet, is primarily made up of rubbish, consisting mainly of beef or poultry by-products, what they really mean is: contains - feet, organs, blood, hides, hooves, beaks, feathers, etc., also containing diseased or cancerous animal tissue from cattle or poultry that have been condemned for human use. Blood soaked sawdust from slaughterhouse floors is also considered to be meat and poultry by-product. I have personally witnessed this in progress and when I inquired with the worker what he was doing with all the blood, bone offcuts and intestines he was hosing off the floor etc., he happily said ‘it is dog food mate’.
It is these by-products that comprise of 40% of our pets food. the other percentage of commercial dog food consists of vegetable fibre, grain and chemicals. Vegetable fibre is made up of corn husks, peanut hulls, ground up corn and what a nutritionless waste it is. In many cases it is grain or soy meal which has been condemned from human consumption because of mould debris, odours or bacterial contamination.
Then come the chemicals which are fed to beef poultry and other farm animals. Some of these are hormones and growth induced steroids designed to bring the animals to slaughter earlier. All of these drugs remain in the flesh of the slaughtered animals and are passed on to the pet or humans that eat that flesh.
It seems with pet manufactures that anything goes. And I wonder how many of our pets have died as a result of these slow poisons in the food.
One of the most prevalent of the preservatives is ‘ETHOXYQUIN’. This is used in the premium veterinary lines of dog food as a preservative. People are buying these more expensive foods thinking they are giving their pet a better food. Did you know that ethoxyquin was developed by a rubber company as a rubber hardener and as a insecticide, it is believed to cause liver and kidney disease, caner, immune diseases and skin problems. Watch for this and for B.H.A. and B.H.T. as a particular prevalent pet food hazards and more importantly avoid them.
then come the artificial colourings and preservatives, sugar and salt, which prevent the fat in the food from going rancid, these in turn cause many pets to become addictive to certain foods. How many times have you heard a fellow dog owner say ‘my pet will not eat anything but......’ salt, just like in humans, can be dangerous in large amounts, they may prompt heart diseases and kidney failure which are routine pet killers today. Sugar can comprise as much as 25% of the semi moist dog food packets and dog biscuits. Sugar and salt become addictive, resulting in diabetes, arthritis, cataracts, allergies, overweight, tooth decay and nervousness.
As humans we get sick when eating too much of such processed foods, well so do our pets. I tell you fellow Pet fanciers the connection between poor diets, early death and high rate of chronic disease can not and should not be ignored.
Today’s diseases are chronic and long term, usually involving the slow and painful degeneration of the body by breaking down the body’s immune system. Diseases like cancer, kidney diseases and heart problems were rare 40 to 50 years ago, today they are the top killers of both humans and pets. Have you noticed that more and more of our pets are manifesting human like diseases and are dying in numbers like never before.
The pet food manufacturers are under great pressure and rightly so, to change their ways, and some are now using Vitamins such as Vit.2, E and C, instead of deadly preservatives, but still fall short of what is required for total health.
So read the label, ask questions. To finish off this section I can not tell you what to feed your dogs, I can only share with you some of this information and suggest.
First and for most the dog is a c