Polluted Pet food

[Guest guest]

POLLUTED PET FOOD

 

Commercial pet food and stock feed contain a cocktail of dead

domestic animals and deadly environmental toxins.

 

NOTICE

 

-All Animals Are To Be Destroyed In A Humane Manner and No Processing

Is To Begin Until The Animal Has Expired.

 

-The Management

 

[sign on the wall of a rendering plant]

 

 

 

Warning: these four short articles will make you rethink what you

feed to your pets, and even what you and your family eat.

 

 

 

--

 

Extracted from NEXUS Magazine, Volume 4, #1 (Dec '96 - Jan 1997).

PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor

Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381

From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

 

 

Reprinted with permission from

Earth Island Journal

(vol. 11, no. 3, Summer 1996)

(vol. 5, no. 4, Fall 1990)

300 Broadway, Suite 28

San Francisco, CA 94133, USA

Phone: +1 (415) 788 3666

Fax: +1 (415) 788 7324

E-mail: earthisland

Web page: http://www.earthisland.org/ei/

 

 

--

 

 

1. THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

 

by Ann Martin

 

The pet food industry, a billion-dollar, unregulated operation, feeds

on the garbage that otherwise would wind up in landfills or be

transformed into fertiliser. The hidden ingredients in a can of

commercial pet food may include roadkill and the rendered remains of

cats and dogs. The pet food industry claims that its products

constitute a " complete and balanced diet " but, in reality, commercial

pet food is unfit for human or animal consumption.

 

" Vegetable protein " , the mainstay of dry dog foods, includes ground

yellow corn, wheat shorts and middlings, soybean meal, rice husks,

peanut meal and peanut shells (identified as " cellulose " on pet food

labels). These often are little more than the sweepings from milling

room floors. Stripped of their oil, germ and bran, these " proteins "

are deficient in essential fatty acids, fat-soluble vitamins and

antioxidants. " Animal protein " in commercial pet foods can include

diseased meat, roadkill, contaminated material from slaughterhouses,

faecal matter, rendered cats and dogs and poultry feathers. The major

source of animal protein comes from dead-stock removal operations

that supply so-called " 4-D " animals & emdash;dead, diseased, dying or

disabled & emdash;to " receiving plants " for hide, fat and meat removal.

The meat (after being doused with charcoal and marked " unfit for

human consumption " ) may then be sold for pet food.

 

Rendering plants process decomposing animal carcasses, large roadkill

and euthanised dogs and cats into a dry protein product that is sold

to the pet food industry. One small plant in Quebec, Ontario, renders

10 tons (22,000 pounds) of dogs and cats per week. The Quebec

Ministry of Agriculture states that " the fur is not removed from dogs

and cats " and that " dead animals are cooked together with viscera,

bones and fat at 115° C (235° F) for 20 minutes " .

 

The US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine

(CVM) is aware of the use of rendered dogs and cats in pet foods, but

has stated: " CVM has not acted to specifically prohibit the rendering

of pets. However, that is not to say that the practise of using this

material in pet food is condoned by the CVM. "

 

In both the US and Canada, the pet food industry is virtually

self-regulated. In the US, the Association of American Feed Control

Officials (AAFCO) sets guidelines and definitions for animal feed,

including pet foods. In Canada, the most prominent control is the

" Labeling Act " , simply requiring product labels to state the name and

address of the manufacturer, the weight of the product and whether it

is dog or cat food. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association

(CVMA) and the Pet Food Association of Canada (PFAC) are voluntary

organisations that, for the most part, rely on the integrity of the

companies they certify to assure that product ingredients do not fall

below minimum standards.

 

The majority & emdash;85 to 90 per cent & emdash;of the pet food sold in

Canada is manufactured by US-based multinationals. Under the terms of

the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement, neither the CVMA nor PFAC

exercises any control over the ingredients in cans of US pet food.

 

Pet food industry advertising promotes the idea that, to keep pets

healthy, one must feed them commercially formulated pet foods. But

such a diet contributes to cancer, skin problems, allergies,

hypertension, kidney and liver failure, heart disease and dental

problems. One more item should be added to pet food labels: a

skull-and-crossbones insignia!

 

(Ann Martin is an animal rights activist and leading critic of the

commercial pet food industry. She lives in London, Ontario, Canada.)

 

 

 

2. FOOD NOT FIT FOR A PET

 

by Dr Wendell O. Belfield, D.V.M.

 

The most frequently asked question in my practice is, " Which

commercial pet food do you recommend? " My standard answer is " None. "

I am certain that pet-owners notice changes in their animals after

using different batches of the same brand of pet food. Their pets may

have diarrhoea, increased flatulence, a dull hair coat, intermittent

vomiting or prolonged scratching. These are common symptoms

associated with commercial pet foods.

 

In 1981, as Martin Zucker and I wrote How to Have a Healthier Dog, we

discovered the full extent of negative effects that commercial pet

food has on animals. In February 1990, San Francisco Chronicle staff

writer John Eckhouse went even further with an exposé entitled " How

Dogs and Cats Get Recycled into Pet Food " .

 

Eckhouse wrote: " Each year, millions of dead American dogs and cats

are processed along with billions of pounds of other animal materials

by companies known as renderers. The finished product...tallow and

meat meal...serve as raw materials for thousands of items that

include cosmetics and pet food. "

 

Pet food company executives made the usual denials. But federal and

state agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, and

medical groups, such as the American Veterinary Medical Association

and the California Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), confirm

that pets, on a routine basis, are rendered after they die in animal

shelters or are disposed of by health authorities & emdash;and the end

product frequently finds its way into pet food.

 

Government health officials, scientists and pet food executives argue

that such open criticism of commercial pet food is unfounded. James

Morris, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis,

California, has said, " Any products not fit for human consumption are

very well sterilised, so nothing can be transmitted to the animal. "

Individuals who make such statements know nothing of the meat and

rendering business.

 

For seven years I was a veterinary meat inspector for the US

Department of Agriculture and the State of California. I waded

through blood, water, pus and faecal material, inhaled the fetid

stench from the killing floor and listened to the death cries of

slaughtered animals.

 

Prior to World War II, most slaughterhouses were all-inclusive; that

is, livestock was slaughtered and processed in one location. There

was a section for smoking meats, a section for processing meats into

sausages, and a section for rendering. After World War II, the meat

industry became more specialised. A slaughterhouse dressed the

carcasses, while a separate facility made the sausages. The rendering

of slaughter waste also became a separate speciality & emdash;no longer

within the jurisdiction of federal meat inspectors and out of the

public eye.

 

To prevent condemned meat from being rerouted and used for human

consumption, government regulations require that meat be " denatured "

before removal from the slaughterhouse and shipment to rendering

facilities. In my time as a veterinary meat inspector, we denatured

with carbolic acid (a potentially corrosive disinfectant) and/or

creosote (used for wood-preservation or as a disinfectant). Both

substances are highly toxic. According to federal meat inspection

regulations, fuel oil, kerosene, crude carbolic acid and citronella

(an insect repellent made from lemon grass) are all approved

denaturing materials.

 

Condemned livestock carcasses treated with these chemicals can become

meat and bone meal for the pet food industry. Because rendering

facilities are not government-controlled, any animal carcasses can be

rendered & emdash;even dogs and cats. As Layne of the CVMA told

the Chronicle, " When you read pet food labels, and it says " meat and

bone meal " , that's what it is: cooked and converted animals,

including some dogs and cats. "

 

Some of these dead pets & emdash;those euthanised by

veterinarians & emdash;already contain pentobarbital before treatment

with the denaturing process. According to University of Minnesota

researchers, the sodium pentobarbital used to euthanise pets

" survives rendering without undergoing degradation " . Fat stabilisers

are introduced into the finished rendered product to prevent

rancidity. Common chemical stabilisers include BHA (butylated

hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) & emdash;both known

to cause liver and kidney dysfunction & emdash;and ethoxyquin, a

suspected carcinogen. Many semi-moist dog foods contain propylene

glycol & emdash;first cousin to the anti-freeze agent, ethylene glycol,

that destroys red blood-cells. Lead frequently shows up in pet foods,

even those made from livestock meat and bone meal. A Massachusetts

Institute of Technology study, titled " Lead in Animal Foods " , found

that a nine-pound cat fed on commercial pet food ingests more lead

than the amount considered potentially toxic for children.

 

I have been practising small-animal medicine for more than 25 years.

Every day I see the casualties of pet industry propaganda. But the

professors in the teaching institutions of veterinary medicine

generally support an industry that has little regard for the quality

of health in our companion animals.

 

One last word of caution: meat and bone meal from sources not fit for

human consumption have found their way into poultry feed. This means

that animal products rendered under questionable conditions are fed

to birds that may wind up on your table. Remember this when you are

eating your next piece of chicken or turkey.

 

(Dr Belfield is a graduate of Tuskegee Institute of Veterinary

Medicine and is now in private practice in San Jose, California. Dr

Belfield established the first orthomolecular veterinary hospital in

the US. He is co-author of The Very Healthy Cat Book and How to Have

a Healthier Dog. This article first appeared in Let's Live Magazine,

May 1992.)

 

 

 

3. A LOOK INSIDE A RENDERING PLANT

 

by Gar Smith

 

Rendering has been called " the silent industry " . Each year in the US,

286 rendering plants quietly dispose of more than 12.5 million tons

of dead animals, fat and meat wastes. As the public relations

watchdog newsletter PR Watch observes, renderers " are thankful that

most people remain blissfully unaware of their existence " .

 

When City Paper reporter Van Smith visited Baltimore's Valley

Proteins rendering plant last summer, he found that the " hoggers "

(the large vats used to grind and filter animal tissues prior to

deep-fat-frying) held an eclectic mix of body parts ranging from

" dead dogs, cats, raccoons, possums, deer, foxes [and] snakes " to a

" baby circus elephant " and the remains of Bozeman, a Police

Department quarterhorse that " died in the line of duty " .

 

In an average month, Baltimore's pound hands over 1,824 dead animals

to Valley Proteins. Last year, the plant transformed 150 millions

pounds of decaying flesh and kitchen grease into 80 million pounds of

commercial meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease. Thirty years

ago, most of the renderer's wastes came from small markets and

slaughterhouses. Today, thanks to the proliferation of fast-food

restaurants, nearly half the raw material is kitchen grease and

frying oil.

 

Recycling dead pets and wildlife into animal food is " a very small

part of the business that we don't like to advertise, " Valley

Proteins' President, J. J. Smith, told City Paper. The plant

processes these animals as a " public service, not for profit, " Smith

said, since " there is not a lot of protein and fat [on pets]..., just

a lot of hair you have to deal with somehow. "

 

According to City Paper, Valley Proteins " sells inedible animal parts

and rendered material to Alpo, Heinz and Ralston-Purina " . Valley

Proteins insists that it does not sell " dead pet by-products " to pet

food firms since " they are all very sensitive to the recycled pet

potential " . Valley Proteins maintains two production lines & emdash;one

for clean meat and bones and a second line for dead pets and

wildlife. However, Van Smith reported, " the protein material is a mix

from both production lines. Thus the meat and bone meal made at the

plant includes materials from pets and wildlife, and about five per

cent of that product goes to dry-pet-food manufacturers... "

 

A 1991 USDA report states that " approximately 7.9 billion pounds of

meat and bone meal, blood meal and feather meal [were] produced in

1983 " . Of that amount, 34 per cent was used in pet food, 34 per cent

in poultry feed, 20 per cent in pig food and 10 per cent in beef and

dairy cattle feed.

 

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) carried in pig- and

chicken-laden foods may eventually eclipse the threat of " mad cow

disease " . The risk of household pet exposure to TSE from contaminated

pet food is more than three times greater than the risk for

hamburger-eating humans.

 

(Gar Smith is Editor of Earth Island Journal.)

 

 

 

 

 

4. THE DARK SIDE OF RECYCLING

 

[Author's name withheld]

 

[in February 1990, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a macabre

two-part story detailing how stray dogs, cats and pound animals are

routinely rounded up by meat renderers and ground up into & emdash;of

all things & emdash;pet food. According to the researcher who brought

the information to the Chronicle, the paper buried the story and

deleted many of the charges he had documented. A report he worked on

for ABC television's 20-20 was similarly watered down. In

exasperation, he sent the story to Earth Island Journal. NEXUS has

been asked to withhold the name of the author/researcher, who has

been forced to flee San Francisco with his wife and go into hiding as

a result of the threats made against his well-being. Ed.]

 

 

 

The rendering plant floor is piled high with " raw product " : thousands

of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and

horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons & emdash;all waiting to be

processed. In the 90-degree heat, the piles of dead animals seem to

have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the

carcasses.

 

Two bandana-masked men begin operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading

the " raw " into a 10-foot- deep stainless-steel pit. They are

undocumented workers from Mexico, doing a dirty job. A giant

auger-grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping bones

and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never

forget.

 

Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the

moisture and fat. The rendering plant works like a giant kitchen. The

cooker, or " chef " , blends the raw product in order to maintain a

certain ratio between the carcasses of pets, livestock, poultry waste

and supermarket rejects.

 

Once the mass is cut into small pieces, it is transported to another

auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one

hour. The continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop, 24 hours

a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from bones in the hot

'soup'. During this cooking process, the 'soup' produces a fat of

yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The

cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which squeezes

out the remaining moisture and pulverises the product into a gritty

powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips.

Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow grease, meat

and bone meal.

 

 

 

A Meaty Menu

 

As the American Journal of Veterinary Research explains, this

recycled meat and bone meal is used as " a source of protein and other

nutrients in the diets of poultry and swine and in pet foods, with

lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle and sheep. Animal fat is

also used in animal feeds as an energy source. " Every day, hundreds

of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons

of this " food enhancer " to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy

and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it

is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that

meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.

 

Rendering plants have different specialities. The labelling

designation of a particular " run " of product is defined by the

predominance of a specific animal. Some product-label names are: meat

meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fish meal,

fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat.

 

Rendering plants perform one of the most valuable functions on Earth:

they recycle used animals. Without rendering, our cities would run

the risk of becoming filled with diseased and rotting carcasses.

Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread uncontrolled through the

population.

 

 

 

The Dark Side

 

Death is the number one commodity in a business where the demand for

feed ingredients far exceeds the supply of raw product. But this

elaborate system of food production through waste management has

evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering plants are unavoidably

processing toxic waste.

 

The dead animals (the " raw " ) are accompanied by a whole menu of

unwanted ingredients. Pesticides enter the rendering process via

poisoned livestock, and fish oil laced with bootleg DDT and other

organophosphates that have accumulated in the bodies of West Coast

mackerel and tuna.

 

Because animals are frequently shoved into the pit with flea collars

still attached, organophosphate-containing insecticides get into the

mix as well. The insecticide Dursban arrives in the form of cattle

insecticide patches. Pharmaceuticals leak from antibiotics in

livestock, and euthanasia drugs given to pets are also included.

Heavy metals accumulate from a variety of sources: pet ID tags,

surgical pins and needles.

 

Even plastic winds up going into the pit. Unsold supermarket meats,

chicken and fish arrive in styrofoam trays and shrink wrap. No one

has time for the tedious chore of unwrapping thousands of rejected

meat-packs. More plastic is added to the pits with the arrival of

cattle ID tags, plastic insecticide patches and the green plastic

bags containing pets from veterinarians.

 

 

 

Rendering Judgements

 

Skyrocketing labour costs are one of the economic factors forcing the

corporate flesh-peddlers to cheat. It is far too costly for plant

personnel to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled T-bone steaks.

Every week, millions of packages of plastic-wrapped meat go through

the rendering process and become one of the unwanted ingredients in

animal feed.

 

The most environmentally conscious state in the nation is California,

where spot checks and testing of animal-feed ingredients happen at

the wobbly rate of once every two-and-a-half months. The supervising

state agency is the Department of Agriculture's Feed and Fertilizer

Division of Compliance. Its main objective is to test for truth in

labelling: does the percentage of protein, phosphorous and calcium

match the rendering plant's claims; do the percentages meet state

requirements? However, testing for pesticides and other toxins in

animal feeds is incomplete.

 

In California, eight field inspectors regulate a rendering industry

that feeds the animals that the state's 30 million people eat. When

it comes to rendering plants, however, state and federal agencies

have maintained a hands-off policy, allowing the industry to become

largely self-regulating. An article in the February 1990 issue of

Render, the industry's national magazine, suggests that the

self-regulation of certain contamination problems is not working.

 

One policing program that is already off to a shaky start is the

Salmonella Education/Reduction Program, formed under the auspices of

the National Renderers Association. The magazine states that

" ...unless US and Canadian renderers get their heads out of the

ground and demonstrate that they are serious about reducing the

incidence of salmonella contamination in their animal protein meals,

they are going to be faced with...new and overly stringent government

regulations. "

 

So far, the voluntary self-testing program is not working. According

to the magazine, " ...only about 20 per cent of the total number of

companies producing or blending animal protein meal have signed up

for the program... " Far fewer have done the actual testing.

 

The American Journal of Veterinary Research conducted an

investigation into the persistence of sodium phenobarbital in the

carcasses of euthanised animals at a typical rendering plant in 1985

and found " ...virtually no degradation of the drug occurred during

this conventional rendering processŠ " and that " ...the potential of

other chemical contaminants (e.g., heavy metals, pesticides and

environmental toxicants, which may cause massive herd mortalities) to

degrade during conventional rendering needs further evaluation. "

 

Renderers are the silent partners in our food chain. But worried

insiders are beginning to talk, and one word that continues to come

up in conversation is " pesticides " . The possibility of

petrochemically poisoning our food has become a reality. Government

agencies and the industry itself are allowing toxins to be

inadvertently recycled from the streets and supermarket shelves into

the food chain. As we break into a new decade of increasingly complex

pollution problems, we must rethink our place in the environment. No

longer hunters, we are becoming the victims of our technologically

altered food chain.

 

The possibility of petrochemically poisoning our food has become a

reality.

 

(First published in Earth Island Journal, Fall 1990.)

 

 

 

 

 

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NO HOMEM E NO ANIMAL O SOFRIMENTO É IGUAL!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Animals in labs: Unseen they suffer, unheard they cry, in agony they linger, in

loneliness they die. "

 

 

 

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