Hurray! Another annual food review is complete (and Ive got another pile of food to take down to my local animal shelter!). Im especially glad to be done with fact-checking the list of our top wet foods, because companies relocate, change their phone numbers, revamp their product lines, and fiddle with ingredients lists. The task is increasingly tedious, especially after 10 years of adding products to the list.
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Speaking of which, it seems like more products than usual got added this year, and not necessarily because they were new. I tried to check with the manufacturer of each of our favorite dry dog foods, to make sure I hadnt overlooked their fine wet products (in several cases, I had).
In other, rare cases, I added a product from a company that already had one or more foods on our list. Youll have to take my word for it, but I hate to add more than one product from any manufacturer to our list; Id prefer to introduce you to an increasing number of pet food makers, especially companies who offer superior products in underserved areas. However, I broke my own unofficial rule in the case of some new and especially compelling products that emerged from a couple of companies that are already on our list.
Until last year, I had never removed a product from our top food lists; though manufacturers do change their formulas from time to time, none of the foods on our lists have changed in a way that would prevent them from meeting our selection criteria. Last year, however, I was surprised by a formula change in a product I had previously approved: the inclusion of animal plasma in a canned food made by Wysong. I took the product off the list without comment, and have been compiling information about the use of animal plasma in food products ever since.
The blood of cows and pigs is collected in some slaughterhouses and processed into a dry powder. Its used extensively in the diets of young pigs and calves. Its also sometimes used as a palatant in a final coating on extruded dog foods and as a protein-rich thickener in canned pet foods. Studies suggest that it is highly digestible; in fact, its inclusion in a canine diet greatly improves the digestion of the diets fiber meaning you can include more (low cost) fiber in a food and the dog will still be able to digest it. An additional selling point is that it tends to make the dogs stool smaller and harder.
Im sure that feeding cow brains to cows once seemed like a really good idea, too.
In case that comment doesnt seem fair, let me be clear: I dont have a single study to cite to justify my gut instinct to cull products that contain animal plasma from our top foods lists. It feels just as wrong to me as feeding beef products to cows. While some nutritionists will utilize any ingredient with perceived benefits, I side with the health and nutrition experts who encourage us to eat (and to feed our dogs) a varied diet of real foods. I mean, with so many healthful, natural, and minimally processed ingredients from which to build a diet, why even go there?
