Cat Food Uncovered

In countries where the pet food industry is poorly regulated, diseased animals and spoiled unsold meat end up in cat food. The British pet food industry uses by-products (the bits we don't like to think about) from animals passed fit for human consumption and BSE-contaminated tissue was removed from pet food long before it was removed from most human food.

In some places, ground-up cats and dogs can end up in pet food. Sanimal of Quebec, Canada mostly process pig and chicken, but rendered approx 18,200 kg of cat and dog flesh each week. The resulting protein meal is sold to pet food manufacturers and animal feed companies. A spokesperson said that the food was healthy and good and suggested that people were squeamish about "cannibal" pet food. However the firm will no longer render domestic animal carcasses, even though this is an efficient, environmentally-friendly way to dispose of carcasses from animal shelters or road kill.

Are we just squeamish about recycling pets into pet food? Bodies must be disposed of and rendering is less polluting than cremation or burial. Sheep and cattle carcasses were burnt and buried en masse during the UK's foot and mouth epidemic - they could not be safely rendered. The air was full of acrid smoke, charred scraps floated from pyres; fluids leaked from burial pits - these disposal methods caused pollution. The question is not "should cats and dogs be rendered" but "should the rendered product be fed back to cats and dogs".

Britain was plagued with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, Mad Cow Disease) due to feeding sheep and cow proteins to cattle. The causative agent (a prion) survived rendering. In humans, new variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD) is linked to eating BSE-infected beef. FSE, the feline version, was linked to cat food or infected meat scraps. Apart from the aesthetics of "cannibal" cat food, there may be genuine health concerns about feeding animals back to members of their own species. I decided to look at what is in pet food and how it is manufactured. I originally studied this topic for a University term paper and grossed out the lecturer!

Where Does Cat Food Come From? - The Rendering Process

Most pet food comes from multinational companies which also own human food concerns. This allows them to profitably use waste products from the human food chain. Many pet food manufacturers use good quality ingredients, others do not. Unless they own and control their own rendering plants, they are dependent on the quality controls and integrity of rendering facilities.

The raw materials e.g. carcasses are rendered. This is the process of processing raw animal material on an industrial scale to remove moisture and fat (note: some rendering plants produce a meat slurry rather than a dry product). Some rendering plants are linked to a particular kind of slaughterhouse; e.g. those near poultry processing plants may deal exclusively with poultry by-products, some specialize in fish products.