Michael W. Fox - Not Fit for a Dog!: The Truth About Manufactured Cat and Dog Food

Copyright 2009 by Michael Fox

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

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Quill Driver Books, an imprint of Linden Publishing

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First Printing

ISBN 978-1-61035-151-5

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fox, Michael W., 1937

Not fit for a dog! : the truth about manufactured dog and cat food / by Michael W. Fox, Elizabeth Hodgkins, and Marion E. Smart.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-61035-149-2

1. Pet food industry. I. Hodgkins, Elizabeth M. II. Smart, Marion E.,

1944- III. Title.

HD9340.A2F69 2008

338.4766466dc22

2008003481

W hen I qualified as a veterinarian in 1973, I left veterinary college believing I could cure almost all the patients I would meet during my veterinary career. It soon became apparent that I was wrong: So many dogs and cats with so much chronic disease, and so many drugs that didnt cure, or caused serious side effects.

After some years I discovered there were other treatments for petsacupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathyand all these became new and effective therapies. But still I had patients that didnt respond completely, andmore to the pointI was seeing ever-increasing numbers of pets suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, eczema, diabetes and urinary tract infections that needed to be cured. What was the cause of all this chronic disease, and why, despite my best efforts, did some patients respond poorly to treatment?

Eventuallyand by this time I had been practicing veterinary medicine for twenty yearsI realized the root cause of most of these diseases. Something so simple, so obvious. Diet. The food that my patients were eating was making them ill.

Looking back now, it seems amazing that it took so long for me to realize that feeding dogs and cats day in, day out, on processed foods, laden with carbohydrates, would damage their health. Carbohydrates are not natural foodstuffs for cats, or for dogs as their main food. Processed pet foods are not healthy foods. They have artificial colorings, artificial flavorings, preservatives, peculiar-sounding ingredients such as animal digest, mechanically retrieved meatin fact, one quick look at the ingredients is enough to sound warning bells for anyone endowed with a modicum of common sense.

Once I began to suggest natural, healthy diets for my patients, their health began to improve. Many clients found it a little odd when I advised throwing away their bags of kibble and cans of cat food. But most of them saw the sense of feeding their pets real food. Just what their pets would eat in the wild.

If only I had understood the importance of a natural healthy diet for pets twenty or thirty years ago, how much more I could have helped my patients. So why didnt I? The book you are about to read, had it been available then, would have saved me decades of misunderstanding the fundamental relationship between natural healthy nutrition and a vibrant healthy pet.

Not Fit for a Dog! highlights the dangers of modern pet foodhow it is unbalanced, creates addiction, and often contains ingredients that can literally poison your pet. It explodes the myths propounded by pet food companies that human food is bad for pets, and that natural diets are unsafe. It exposes the horrific truths that pet food manufacturers will sell you a normal diet for your cat that will cause diabetes, and then sell you another prescription diet to help control the diabetes, and how prescription diets themselves can cause illness.

This book is a massive indictment of the pet food industry, but also of our whole approach to growing and processing foodfor us humans as well as for our pets.

I asked the question: why didnt I realize for so long the dangers of manufactured pet food, and the benefits of a natural diet? The reason is that veterinary students are not given the facts. Indeed, information and training in pet nutrition for veterinary students is given, funded and controlled to a huge extent by the pet food industry itself.

If this book had been available when I was a student and a newly qualified vet, it would have transformed my attitude to nutrition and health for pets. If I was able, I would lock every veterinary student and every practicing veterinarian in a room with a copy of this book, and not let them out until they had read it from cover to cover.

RICHARD ALLPORT B.Vet.Med., M.R.C.V.S.

Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, England

T he pet food recall in spring 2007the biggest pet food recall ever, that caused the untimely deaths of an estimated 8,500 cats and dogs across North Americabrought three concerned veterinarians together to write this book and share with pet owners, other veterinarians, and animal-care providers their professional expertise and opinions on what is best to feed companion animals for their ultimate health and happiness.

Feeding ones pet is an important ritual for cat and dog owners because giving food is one of the most effective ways to express affection and appreciation and affirm the bond between the animal and the human care giver.

The sanctity of this fundamental part of the human-companion animal bond includes the trust that pet owners have in the various brands and varieties of commercial processed pet foods, often recommended by their veterinarians, that they feed every day to their beloved dogs and cats. Most pet owners trust veterinarians to put first and foremost the overall health and well-being of the clients animal companions.

But the same cannot be said of the pet food industry that is a subsidiary of the multinational human food industryan agribusiness enterprise with considerable political influencethat puts profits first. It has turned the recycling of human food and agricultural byproducts and wastes into a multibillion dollar business. While it is highly profitable, is it nutritious? Is it safe? We believe the answer is no.

The massive recall of more than 1,000 different varieties of cat and dog food is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. At deeper levels, beneath the radar of inadequate government oversight, are serious problems when it comes to pet (and human) food manufacturers claims and assurances of safety and quality. As this book revealseven disregarding the poison-contaminated pet food ingredients bought on the cheap from China by American pet food manufacturers and supplierscats and dogs fed conventional manufactured pet foods are more likely to suffer chronic and costly quality of life issues at their owners expense and anguish.

Feeding our pets a variety of nutritious, wholesome, safe foods appropriate for the individual speciesfor instance, cats are carnivores, and cannot ever be vegetariansis a basic duty and fulfills an obligation we assume when we chose to own animals.

To some, this is sentimentalism and an unconscionable ideal when there is so much human poverty and malnutrition in the world. But the two are connected, as is the suffering of millions of sick, starving, poisoned, and dying dogs and cats in the third world. The dynamic is more rich versus poor, rather than pets versus people. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, The cattle of the rich steal the bread of the poor.

At the impoverished end of the global market food chain, dogs and cats, along with other domestic animals, suffer many illnesses due in large part to dietary immunodeficiency. Dietary deficiencies mean weakened immune systems for humans and other animals. At the more affluent, if not conspicuously consumptive, end of the food chain, cats and dogs mirror many of the diseases of dietary excess and imbalance evident in their owners, notably obesity, diabetes, heart disease, various forms of cancer, arthritis, allergies, digestive disorders, and other diet-related health problems. These two poles of the global food market are connected by the politics of market access, multinational corporate hegemony and monopoly, declining food quality and affordability, and the searing legacies of colonialism, land misuse, and population growth.