Kitty Goes Organic
(Part of my Green This House program.)
I think Chekhov has finally reached a place of spiritual acceptance over the fact that his delicious crap is never coming back. Apparently I’m not the only meanie-butt human can-opener around, because organic pet food sales are growing at nearly three times the rate of organic human food, according to the Organic Trade Association.
“The major problem with the content of conventional pet foods is the use of ‘animal by-products,’ which are low-grade wastes from the beef and poultry industries,” Dr. Andrew Weil tells PlanetSave.com. (Weil is a holistic-medicine advocate who endorses Pet Promise, a line of dry and canned foods for cats and dogs.) He goes on to say on his Web site that “the animals used to make many pet foods are classified as ‘4-D,’ which stands for Dead, Dying, Diseased or Down (disabled) when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. If the meat from an animal is acceptable for human consumption, it likely will not be used for commercial pet food unless you buy products which truthfully state that they use FDA-certified, food-grade meat.”
Translation: Rover and Fluffy get the scraps no human in his or her right mind would deign to touch under normal circumstances.
Weil says that nutrition is just as significant to our animal compadres as it is to us because it’s “one of the most important determinants of health and resistance to disease.” Ideally, he says, we should be feeding our pets meat, poultry, and fish of a similar quality to what we would eat. For optimum nutrition, their chow should be “raised in sustainable, humane ways without added drugs and hormones, and with quality grains, fats and macronutrients.”
What is organic or natural pet food, anyway? Says PlanetSave.com:
Natural pet foods generally are minimally processed and are preserved with natural substances, such as vitamins C and E. Whereas “natural” is an undefined and unregulated distinction, “certified organic” pet foods must meet strict standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that spell out how ingredients must be produced and processed. These standards do not allow the use of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, artificial preservatives, artificial ingredients or genetically engineered ingredients.
…
Besides pesticides and hormones, natural and organic pet foods are free of other undesirable ingredients such as hair, blood, waste and “meal,” all of which come from the rendered carcasses of livestock animals.
One caveat, though:
Phil Brown, a veterinarian who helped develop the formulas for Newman’s Own Organics pet foods, says “natural” has come to mean that the food is free of chemical preservatives and artificial colors, but does not guarantee that the food is free of pesticides, herbicides or antibiotics.
“Natural pet foods can be good foods, but just how good is up to the company,” he says. “I like organic because it has defined parameters.”
Chekhov may not be a Friskies cat anymore—we feed him PetGuard now1—but he still loves to cha-cha. (And if he’s good, this hard-nosed vegetarian might buy some organic cage-free chicken and prepare the homemade-cat-food recipe outlined at the bottom of the article.)
1PetGuard’s antibiotic- and artificial-preservative-free line includes a USDA-organic-certified flavor, Organic Chicken and Vegetables, though not all of its products are certified organic.
meranie said,
July 11, 2006 at 7:03 pm
WOW. I can’t even stomach washing my boy’s meat pans and dishes, and you’d make a chicken? WOW.
We feed our cat Science Diet until we can go to the ‘States and then I’m switching to organic. Geez.
The Worsted Witch » Purrfect Fence for Sneaky Cats said,
March 1, 2007 at 10:11 am
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