The Pet-food Protein-gate, part one

A couple of weeks ago (Daily Dose, 4/10/2007), I wrote to you about the breaking story of contamination in mass-produced pet foods that has so far sickened and killed untold numbers of beloved American pets - dog and cats, specifically. And because it was so early on in the crisis, I had very little information to impart to you about exactly what was causing these casualties...

But I did have some recommendations on how to safeguard your kitties and pups against this fate: To feed them ONLY raw liver, chicken necks (most other uncooked meats are OK as well), and at least one daily raw egg - including the shell - rounding out their diet with cut vegetables added to the bowl.

As you'll recall, this advice of mine directly contradicts not only everything you'll hear down at your local PetSmart store (or Petco, whatever), but also what several mainstream books recently published in wide release have to say about canine and feline diets. Believe me, though - I'm right and they're wrong.

Today, there's even more proof of this. More information has surfaced about exactly WHY our precious pets are dying. And as usual when it comes to nutrition - human or animal - one thing lies at the root of all the evil...

Vegetarianism.

In case you haven't heard, the U.S. FDA is all but certain the source of the contamination that's sickening and killing our cats and dogs is melamine, a toxic chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, pesticides, and as a fertilizer. Melamine is high in nitrogen. Now stay with me here, this last little factoid is the heart of this whole insidious issue...

Though deemed safe in low concentrations - like what might be found in vegetables grown in fields fertilized or insect-controlled with melamine - direct ingestion of the substance can be deadly. Yet according to the FDA, melamine poisoning is likely what's sickening and killing so many of our pets nowadays. This kind of contamination would be VERY DIFFICULT without somebody adding melamine directly to pet foods, or to their ingredients.

Despite the fact that it's horrible for pets, most brands of modern pet foods - especially the dry varieties - are made almost entirely of vegetable ingredients. There are several reasons for this, foremost among them being cost. It's far cheaper to make pet foods from soy this and wheat gluten that than it is to use real meats (which is impossible in the dry foods anyway)...

But since the average pet owner is at least aware of the fact that animals, like people, need PROTEIN to survive, pet food makers are big on adding things to their food to boost the appearance of nutrition. And in this case, that "additive" was very likely poisonous melamine.

Remember how I said before that nitrogen was the key here? According to a recent USA Today article, the agricultural industry typically gauges a raw grain's protein content by measuring its nitrogen content. Nitrogen levels generally correspond quite closely with protein levels...

Are you starting to see how this shakes out?

That's right. The FDA and other groups strongly suspect that nitrogen-rich melamine fertilizer was added in raw form to large quantities of ALREADY HARVESTED wheat and rice earmarked for pet foods in order to create the illusion that these worthless grains were higher in protein that they actually are.

But this is only part of the story. Read on in the next Daily Dose...

Adamant about killer additives,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.