Have you ever heard of melamine or pentobarbital? Well, if you haven’t melamine is a small nitrogen containing molecule. Some of the ways melamine is used is as a flame retardant, an industrial binding agent, a fertilizer in some parts of the world and is used as a polymer for making utensils and plates. Consuming melamine can lead to kidney failure and ultimately death. Pentobarbital is a barbiturate that is a drug commonly used to euthanize animals. Now, what do they have in common? Well, they both have been found in your pets’ food. Yes, you heard me correctly, in your pet’s food.
In 2007 the biggest pet food recall ever happened, and it was due to a melamine in the food. A lot of dogs were getting sick, many with kidney disease and eventually the discovery happened. Kidney disease in dogs is terminal and if you were to treat it will be thousands of dollars in bills. What happened was in order to boost protein levels in lab tests 2 Chinese manufacturers and a US based importer were all involved in a scheme to add melamine to wheat gluten. Over 150 brands were recalled by multiple companies. By doing this they got the protein result they wanted….. at a HUGE expense.
As for pentobarbital, it was found in large quantities poisoning pets all over the Pacific Northwest. This isn’t the first time this drug has been found in our pets food, it’s been found in their food for years. You might now be asking yourself how does this happen? It happens because commercial food is generally made from feed grade, not food grade. We will be discussing the difference in another post.
With a lot of illnesses on the rise with our pets, shorter life expectancies, more chronic issues, allergies etc. we need to keep asking ourselves why? As we keep seeing the why keeps getting traced back to the source, the food.
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