Pet Foods- Fortified with synthetics for survival

Firstly, Thank you for taking the time to read this.

This topic is something we don't talk about much any more because our usual audience already knows this so it's pointless us banging on about it.

However, we thought we'd cover this just on the off chance that pet owners that stumble across this blog who don't know about it will find it useful and informative.

To get started we'll touch on the history of pet foods and how it all evolved to the multi-billion £/$ industry it is today.

Brief History 

James Spratt was a "sparky" turned American entrepreneur who launched the first dog biscuit/cake, in the year of 1860 in London. The "Meat Fibrine Dog Cake" (Patented) is where it all begun, the brainbox thought of this product after witnessing, what would of been Victorian street dogs, chowing down on Hardtack when he arrived at the Docks in Liverpool, England. 

For those of you that don't know,  Hardtack is essentially a cracker, high in carbs intended to provide energy to voyagers such as James Spratt who travelled from America to England.

There it was, the light bulb moment that literally shaped the world and indirectly created the pet food industry we know today.

The Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes were inexpensive to produce and didn't spoil easy, they'd go stale but beggars can't be choosers, which is exactly why the street dogs would of opted for Hardtack too, a scavenging species after all. Dogs will often eat low value foods for survival, not by choice.  If you gave them the option of crackers or raw steak, the meat would go first.

Spratt formed the first pet food manufacturing company in London and his dog cakes were initially sold to English country gentlemen for their working/sport dogs.  The dog cakes were made from wheat, vegetables, beetroot and meat, although the source of meat was never transparent and some speculate it was simply myoglobin added in and not meat.  

These ingredients were then baked to form the cake, at this point, only whole food ingredients were used and no additives/preservatives. This leaves the question of "When did pet food products start to take a downward spiral by cutting corners and replacing whole foods with synthetics?"

The Start of Commercial Pet Foods

A downward Spiral

Spratt's firm and patent was bought out by fellow Americans upon his death, in 1880 and manufacturing started over in the US too, expanding on the range of foods and began making tinned meats , kibbles and treats. At this point these products weren't regulated, they weren't analysed in labs etc so from a nutritional stand point in todays world, they would fall under "complimentary" products. It wasn't long until this market reached the UK.

In the late 1800's , Veterinary nutrition started to come into play, no doubt because some dogs eating nothing but these complimentary products were starting to show signs of ailments, in 1909 the AAFCO (Association of Feed Control Officials) was founded, this was the first regulatory body of pet foods. This stopped companies literally selling bags of feathers, beaks fur and lard as pet foods. 

As times goes on, a popular product founded and globally marketed by the American Chappel Brothers in 1922, was Ken-L Ration, the marketing team behind this even had product placement in Rin Tin Tin, Rin Tin Tin was then even used on the product labelling.  This is when pet food marketers started to be savvy and aim to satisfy human appeasement with such gimmicks, the marketing sold the products, the quality of the food soon became irrelevant. 

This got the attention of many other companies and major investors of the time, the Chappel brothers company also created another popular brand, which is still on the shelves to this day! Yes you guessed it,  "Chappie" was there's too.  Mars Confectionary bought them out in 1934, this was the start of "Mars Pet Care" who now create most of the pet foods globally, own animal hospitals(Banfield), vet practices, laboratories (Waltham) and even train vets, creating a cartel like marketing funnel for their questionable "Foods".

Scientists/Chefs have been playing around with formulations in respect of whole foods, processes and synthetics used to gain an understanding of pet nutrition and simultaneously increasing company profits, funded by the pet food manufacturers/"governing bodies". Science really was starting to evolve,  It wasn't until the 1960's that a "Complete and Balanced" formulation was created for puppies, literally 100 years on from James Spratt's light bulb moment.  

Synthetic Advancement

It's no coincidence that the science of pet nutrition started to evolve at the same time as the research on synthetic vitamins/minerals for disease control, it was really taking off, in the 1920's Merck and Bayer teamed up to create a product called "Vigantol" which was a synthetic Vitamin A/D to treat /prevent rickets. The 1930's is also when Acorbic Acid (Synthetic Vitamin C) was discovered by Albert Szent-Györgyi, thankfully it was noted that Dogs synthesized their own vitamin C, or this no doubt would be added into commercial pet foods too. Side note: Dogs don't synthesize this very well, many factors also hinder this, such as stress and illness, so we always suggest adding in whole food sources of vitamin C such as parsley.

During this scientific evolution, they used animals including dogs, beagles especially when carrying out research/tests for vitamins and minerals intended for humans, so these studies /testing also doubled up as data for formulations too. 6 years or so later, in 1933 synthetic vitamins/minerals was introduced to pet foods, ever since the quality of whole foods got worse, processes got harsher (extrusion) and the synthetics increased, all in the name of profit not health and longevity. (in our opinion. this is a critical point in time, corporate greed really buggered up our pets)  

The demise of table scraps

In our view, the earlier times especially before WW2, dogs were still getting superior table scraps, we humans ate much more "real food" including offal than we do now, liver for example was cheap and cheerful, chuck in raw meaty bones and meat trimmings from the butcher and dogs would of had allot of their nutritional needs met this way, irrelevant to the pet foods given too.

They'd of also been free roaming allot more and scavenging else where, Dog laws didn't really become common until the dangerous dogs act of 1991, before this, it wasn't uncommon to see random dogs in the street/allyways just going about their day, the census of dogs in the UK wouldn't been anywhere near the volume of dogs around today, so thankfully the law came in or it would be carnage with all those dogs free roaming still. 

We humans were also less reliant on large supermarkets, mothers and grand mothers provided home cooked meals in earlier times, before microwaves even existed, Processed foods weren't as common,  so dogs naturally ate much better.

The pet food industry was booming creating pet specific foods, pet owners started to just rely on these and table scraps/home cooked meals for pets soon stopped because it was cheaper or easier to give them "dog food", the pet food industry created that cognitive separation.  Food used to be food regardless of the consumer, now dogs eat "dog food".  It's a good job really, because I wouldn't eat the garbage they expect dogs too, they put so much time and money into palatability because the foods are so poor, they use synthetic flavour enhancers to entice pets to eat it, that alone should be enough to make you swerve them.

Fast forward to 2022 and our foods are equally laced with synthetic Vitamins, Minerals and Preservatives, so by default our dogs are also being exposed to these via table scraps alongside their synthetic rich staple diet too.

Table scraps are no longer a healthier option now, especially in poorer households that can only afford to live off processed foods, we won't go into politics but the world can be a dark place for many.

                                                    Independent Academic Research (NRC)

After many pets were suffering from various illnesses and disease, Independent Academic backed regulation kicks in.  Although the National Research Council was established in 1916 by the United States National Academies, it didn't publish its first guidelines for pet nutrition until the mid 1980's starting with Dogs and Cats, although they now cover poultry and equines too. 

It was NRCs project to carry out studies and get them peer reviewed to gain a base level foundation in respect of the nutrient requirements of dogs and cats which will be used as a "bible" for the manufacturers to adhere by. These studies carried out and compiled took some time to do, their guidelines were last updated in 2006, 20 years or so later from the initial publication.

The NRC nutrient requirements of Dogs and Cats really is an amazing publication, it's an in depth book backing up their suggested nutritional needs for survival across all life stages, these were also based on synthetics too and taking bioavailability into account. 

Regulation 

In our opinion. the NRC was a game changer because it was the first independent academic collaboration, all contributors were Vets/Doctors, As mentioned above, the AAFCO were already established but they are a not for profit self governing body, just like FEDIAF and equivalents, when they started to govern pet food companies, at the time and even now, the committee is primarily made up of business men/women that are also working for a pet food manufacturing company such as Nestle or Mars, not necessarily knowledgeable on pet nutrition, their expertise lies with improving the bottom lines while remaining compliant ($$$/£££) 

The conspiracy theorists may even say they alter their own regulations to suit their practices and products but we have a view of "It is what it is, we'll just promote fresh foods where possible". 

Issues with Self Governance

This is very concerning to us, although pet foods companies are regulated, they in effect regulate themselves indirectly, adding to this worry,  even now in 2022, no one regulates the self regulating bodies so the buck stops with them. 

To us, this explains how corners are cut very easily and science is used loosely in order to profit from formulations, confirmation bias comes to mind, thankfully due to the use of pharmaceuticals in formulations, they also have to abide by regulations such as the FDA's FSMA (Food Safety Modernisation Act)  in order to minimise the risk of foodborne disease (a bill was passed in 2011) this ensures thorough pathogenic testing with strict recall procedures in place which are enforced by the FDA in the US. 

The UK also has these procedures but they're monitored and enforced by the FSA and DEFRA, although many would argue they don't do a great job because they don't have the resources to enforce and allot of the guidelines are left open to interpretation by representatives in local authorities.

Since the NRC was established and provided the initial foundation of requirements, the suggestions have been taken and "advanced" by the likes of the AAFCO in the U.S and FEDIAF in Europe who are the governing bodies of pet food manufactures in their jurisdiction.

Both of these bodies are constantly monitoring the figures to ensure pet food manufacturers are using formulations with scientific backing, although if you cross referenced them now, they'd be a slight discrepancies with the initial NRC suggestions, but this is due to "scientific advancements". 

In our view, most of these advancements are being pioneered by the Waltham Centre of Pet Nutrition (Owned by Mars) and Hills (Owned by Colgate Palmolive)  both of these have released their own books in respect of Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, Hills having a couple of Editions, we believe there's 5 now, We currently have the 4th Edition.

If you take this at face value, it is brilliant and "innovative" but we have to remember these are self governing bodies, which seem to be re-writing guidelines to suit themselves using studies provided by the very companies their governing.

We naturally hold a little bit of suspicion because these updates aren't independent so there's a natural bias. therefore we use the NRC a lot more, although many argue its outdated, dogs haven't evolved over the last 16 years, the findings will still be in great standing.

Complete and Balanced- A new era

As we go through life with a lot of scientific advancement and clinical experience/feeding trials, 2006 is when the "complete and balanced" foods really took off as being the "Gold Standard" for pet nutrition, they were a few products labelled this way since 1969 but they were few and far between as not many manufactures could afford the research and it was easier to produce complimentary products, such as the tinned meats intended to be fed with mixer biscuits, Pedigree (Mars) comes to mind when we were children, plus table scraps inclusive of bones from the butcher,  remember when dog poo turned white? Don't see that very often now do you?

Even though the pet food industry is 150+ years old, the complete and balanced way of feeding pets is still immature in comparison, 20 years or so is an accurate window for dogs and cats to be eating complete and balanced dry foods alone,  as they were marketed to owners with convenience as the unique selling point and not the health of the pet, although they were created with science in mind too proven to keep them alive for 6 months, clinical feeding trials are always carried out, new formulations really do have to jump through hoops before they're sold to the consumers, from memory the approval rate is 80% efficacy, meaning that they know up to 20% of dogs won't do well on the formulations.

One of the tests on the feeding trials is monitoring Coprophagia, which simply means "deprived appetite" a form of Pica syndrome where the dog will eat its own faeces, this is a tell tell sign that the formula is no good because it's not nourishing their bodies sufficiently, the frequency of Coprophagia is scored 1-5.   We leant this after a documentary which went behind the doors at the Mars Factory in Melton Mowbray, UK.

Cons of the science

In our view, the downfall of these guidelines, including the NRC's is that they recommend nutrient levels, not foods.  So manufactures that hit their suggested figures with a synthetic premix can sell and label foods that are balanced and complete but the quality of the whole foods used and processing of is irrelevant, so pets can literally be surviving off synthetics, not thriving we'll add.  

As mentioned above, the newer updates by AAFCO/FEDIAF and equivalents are also biased.  No other industry in business would get away with being able to regulate themselves how they do, It really is mind boggling, but money talks we suppose.

In December 2020, a brilliant book was published, written by the wonderful Dr Conor Brady, who spent over a decade compiling studies, that goes into the science behind the pet food industry and how they're using science to fit their own agendas in order to profit, mean while the pets are suffering.

It's not just Dr Conor Brady that's doing his best to open the eyes of the consumer, but many Dr's and Vets have been trying for decades such as Dr Tom Lonsdale, Dr Ian Billinghurst, Dr W.Jean Dodds whom all promote fresh foods for pets and the downfalls of commercial products. 

In the UK we have a great network of Vets whom are members of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, founded by the amazing Dr Nick Thompson, these are the Vets that are tired of witnessing with ill pets as a result of poorly formulated pet foods and have witnessed the benefits on a clinical level when pets are eating fresh foods, thankfully there is a team of Dr's over at the University of Helsinki, under the name DogRisk which seem to be conducting studies independently and against the coin so to speak, the studies they do, wont' get funding purely because in our view, they're out to call bull sh*t on the pet food industry biased studies.

Science is like magic, you can use it for good or evil.  If you're a Harry Potter fan, Slytherin is the Pet Food Industry and Gryffindor is the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, pick your own house team but Gryffindor always wins!

Anyway, that's enough of our waffling.

The above is based on paraphrased information that we've read over various sources over the years, but you can clearly get the gist why we advocate fresh foods for pets, nutrition is one piece of the puzzle but it's an important one when it comes to supporting their optimum health.