It has been recently reported that nearly half of all dog and cat illness, which ultimately ended in death is cancer. This is a most unusual and alarming trend. One of the reasons American dogs and cats are getting very sick can be found in the pet foods they eat everyday. The realities of animal health aren’t much different than human health: if you consume a diet of toxins, eventually you will get terribly sick.

Despite the appealing blandishments of pet food advertisements with their claims of providing “complete and balanced nutrition”, if you’re not exceedingly circumspect, you may be feeding your pet chicken heads, “road kill”, spoiled and moldy grains, cancerous tumors cut from slaughterhouse animals, tissue high in hormone or pesticide residues, and even shredded Styrofoam packaging, metal ID tags and minced flea collars.

Don’t expect the food label to be any true guide to the products contents. The list of ingredients on that bag of dry food or can of “meat” can mask the toxic horrors behind innocuous sounding phrases such as “meat-meal”, “bone-meal”, and “meat-by-products”. Commercial dog food companies are for the most part owned by corporations that produce foods for human consumption. In turn, anything left that is not for human consumption will go to the pet food division. Including moldy grains, grease from grease traps stored in drums for months at a time, and all parts of animals not fit for humans.

Rendering Garbage into Pet Food
Rendering is the process of grinding up and then melting down cooking scrap material from animals. The final product of this process is meat and bone meal and squeezed out fats which are sold to pet food companies.

The list of materials that go into the rendering process is extensive and horrific. When cattle, sheep and poultry are slaughtered for human consumption, the parts deemed unsuitable for eating- heads, (including growth hormone implants in cattle), skin, fat containing pesticide residues, toenails , hair or feathers, joints, hooves, stomach, bowels, eyes, and tumors are rendered.

Other animal parts sent to rendering plants include cancerous tissue, worm-infested organs, contaminated blood and blood clots. Compounding these toxins, slaughterhouses add carbolic acid and fuel oil to these remnants as a way of marking these foods unfit for human consumption.

Animals classified as “4-D” (dead, diseased, dying, and disabled) – that is, too unhealthy for human consumption are rendered. These include animals with antibiotics in their system that is commonly used in meat production.

"Road kill” animals and deceased zoo animals are also sent to rendering plants. Supermarket meats that are no longer fresh are sent to rendering plants (including the Styrofoam packaging and shrink-wrap).
All of this material is slowly ground up then chipped and shredded and cooked for up to an hour. The fat separates during cooking and is removed. What’s left over is pressed to remove all moisture and crushed into what is misleadingly called “bone-meal” or “meat meal”.

Meat and poultry by-products, another major category of pet food ingredients, are unrendered parts of the animal left over after slaughter, everything deemed unfit for human consumption. In cattle and sheep, this included brain, liver, kidneys, spleen, lungs, blood, bones, fatty tissue, stomachs and intestines. These parts can normally be consumed by humans but would have to be diseased or contaminated before they could be designated for pet food. Poultry by-products include heads, feet, intestines, undeveloped eggs, feathers and egg shells.

Anything in pet food not deemed fit for humans can be conveniently buried under the rubric “by-products”.
Grains in pet food are what ever is left over after a grain has been processed for human use, containing no nutritional value. Grains that are moldy and contaminated go to pet food companies for use in their foods. These moldy grains can contain a deadly fungal toxin that multiplies in the grain.

Pet foods are sprayed with contaminated grease from grease traps to entice pets to eat the food.
Harmful chemicals and preservatives are added to wet and dry food. Coloring agents and preservatives include ethoxyquin (which is actually an insecticide) and BHA and BHT, chemicals all linked to cancer. The average dog can consume 26 pounds of these chemicals every year from eating commercial dog food.
The manufacturing process destroys most of whatever minimal nutritional content remained from the dubious list of ingredients.

No consumer agency is looking out for your pet’s health’s interest. The pet food industry is virtually unregulated regarding food composition. In fact, information about the poisons in pet foods in not easily obtained; hence its shock-value when it’s finally revealed to the unsuspecting public.

Recent studies have shown the ingredients and processing of pet foods to be a factor in the increasing number of pets suffering from cancer, arthritis, obesity, dental disease, heart disease, and allergies.