Reasons for Testing Your Pet Food

Before being offered for sale to the public, pet food must undergo a series of manufacturing processes. Manufacturer use extruder machine to blend all the ingredients together when producing dry pet food and use a special extruder to mix the ground ingredients with additives when producing wet food. After being cooked, these ones are canned.

What is in your pet food?

There are a variety of pet food ingredients. The most common ones are:

1. Animal protein. This may come from chicken, lamb, cattle and swine. This can also include tripe and tongues that even people love to eat. There are instances however when remains of the carcass such as heads, bones, blood, intestines, spleens, lungs, livers, feet and fat trimmings are used in producing food for pets. These are otherwise known as by-products and are commonly popular for production of feeds for livestock and poultry.

2. Vegetable protein. The popularity of these ingredients had grown over time. Cereal grains as well as starchy vegetables are commonly used in dry foods. These are said to provide animals with the energy they need. Corn and wheat gluten are also used in creating this.

3. Poultry and animal fat. These are fats that have been sprayed directly to the extruded pellets or kibbles. They make the product even more palatable to fit a pet’s taste. These fats are also called binding agents. They are also used by manufacturers to enhance the flavor of some processed by-products of animal proteins.

4. Additives. These are especially found in processed pet foods for the purpose of improving their taste, appearance, characteristics and stability. But the problem is they do not provide any nutritional value to the product. They commonly contain emulsifiers that work in order to prevent separation of fat and water. They also contain antioxidants for rancid prevention in fats as well as artificial flavors to make the overall product attractive to their end users.

Why Test Your Pet Food?

Pet foods that are sold commercially are preserved by their manufacturers. This is to make them more appealing to the pets that will consume them. This is one of the main reasons why additives or preservatives are being used.

With the injection of preservatives in these foods however, some chemicals need to be used in the process. To maintain a shelf life of at least twelve months, synthetic additives are used. These ones include butylated hydroxytoluene or BHT and butylated hydroxyanisole or BHA. Some also include propylene glycol, an agent that is commonly described as a less-toxic version of antifreeze used in automotives.

BHA and BHT are two components that have been detected to potentially cause cancer in human beings. Although the effects of using these agents in these foods have not been studied thoroughly, testing is deemed necessary. Propylene glycol on the other hand, showed causes of anemia in cats. This banned the ingredient from cat food but not in dog food.

These chemical, additives or preservatives, whichever way we call them, are said to be the main reasons behind why pet food testing is required. Aside from the facts stated above, here are some other things you need to know regarding why testing your pet food is necessary:

1. Bacteria in food. Since some components of pet foods come from slaughtered animals, bacteria may pile up in these foods. The most common bacteria are E. coli and salmonella.

2. Development of mycotoxins. These are toxins commonly found in fungi or molds. Some modern farming practices together with improper processes of drying and storage can lead to mold accumulation. There are pet foods that come from grains and fish meal. These ones need to undergo pet food testing.

3. Chemical residues. Even if manufacturers vouch that their products do not contain chemicals, there are instances when chemical residues may still affect the product as a whole. Plant products used in manufacturing pet foods may have been grown through fertilizers or pesticides that can also cause harm to our animal companions.

With all these ingredients found in pet foods, there is really a need to have yours tested before you even feed them to your animal companions. Even if some product manufacturers recently made pet food recalls in the market, there is no guarantee that what you have at home for feeding your pets is freed from harmful contaminants.