Pet People!

At Love Street Living Foods we make choosing the most nutritious, healthy foods a priority in our every day lives. Nearly 39% of all households own at least one dog, and almost 34% own at least one cat. So chances are good that choosing a healthy dog or cat food is a priority for your family as well. Finding premium pet food can be difficult in today’s market with more than 80% of the pet food giants controlling the market and selling food with cheap ingredients. There are so many choices of pet foods out there; the variety in the supermarket can be overwhelming. Every label indicates why it is "nutritionally balanced" and "loaded with essential nutrients" for your pet. But what the big pet food companies don’t want us to know is that most pet foods contain ingredients that you wouldn’t ever consider edible – animal by products such as chicken feet, intestines, beaks, and heads. What’s more, these products usually contain chemical preservatives, artificial food coloring and flavors, and sometimes even corn and wheat gluten which are known allergens. All of these ingredients can be harmful to your pets. Which is why holistic pet foods are the better choice when it comes to feeding your animal companions.

Healthy pet food is made from only the finest and most natural ingredients that are processed in human grade conditions. When you’ve got fresh, wholesome ingredients in your pet food, you can be sure that what you’re feeding your pet is safe and is packed with all the nutrients and minerals essential to her/him. Healthy pet food should also go through a process of fast cooking, which allows it to retain more of the nutrients that can be lost through standard methods of slow cooking (ie; boiling, simmering etc.). This type of pet food contains chicken meal, fish meal, turkey meal, whole vegetables, and eggs which are abundant sources for your cat’s or dog’s much needed nutrition and are also easy to digest. These contain necessary nutrients and vitamins: chicken meal is high in protein; egg contains vitamins A, B, E, and K plus biotin, sulfur, and amino acids which are good for cell growth; fish meal contains the essential Omega-3 and fatty acids for healthy skin and coat; and vegetables such as garlic, celery, spinach, apples, and alfalfa for antioxidants.

According to Dr. Richard Pitcairn in his book, Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats, there is no mandatory federal inspection of ingredients used in standard pet food manufacturing. In all but two or three states, the law allows pet food makers to use “4-D sources”, which includes tissues from animals that are dead, dying, disabled or diseased when they arrive at a slaughterhouse. Another shocking fact is that before meat even arrives at the rendering plant it has already been saturated with chemicals.

To comply with government regulations all meat rejected by slaughterhouses must be “denatured”; a procedure designed to make it unpalatable to humans, thus ensuring it cannot be resold as human grade meat. There are a variety of methods used. Dr. Wendell Belfied, DVM (former USDA vet) wrote in “Let’s Live” magazine:“In my time as a veterinary meat inspector, we denatured with carbolic acid (phenol, a potentially corrosive disinfectant) and/or creosote (used to preserve wood, also a disinfectant).”

According to federal meat inspection regulations fuel oil, kerosene, carbolic acid and citronella are all approved denaturing materials. Other foods rejected by the USDA that ends up in pet foods include moldy grains and rancid animal fats. According to an article in “Environmental News” (March ’99) a large percentage of commercial pet food is made up of meat by-products: a toxic brew containing diseased and contaminated meat from slaughterhouses, animal heads, toenails, chicken feathers, feet and beaks. Even more shocking, this also includes dead animals picked up from our nation’s roads, rancid restaurant grease, and thousands of animals that have been euthanized in animal hospitals and shelters (flea collars and all). Along with the meat comes any drugs that have been introduced into the animals such as hormones, antibiotics and barbiturates used to put pets to sleep. And let's not forget the unsold supermarket meats that arrive in their original Styrofoam and plastic packaging, and are tossed into the pot.

If you haven’t already made some changes in your pet’s diet, this information will certainly make you want to seek some alternatives. One good resource for dietary information is Dr. Pitcairn’s book, which contains recipes to make your pet’s food as well as natural alternatives to commercial foods.

Currently at Love Street Living Foods, the only pet product we carry is our Green Mush by Health Force Nutritionals. Green Mush™ is a whole food, green plant based combination. It is completely unlike traditional multi-vitamin/mineral products in that it is truly effective, totally non-toxic and exceptionally absorbable with no toxicity (not excreted as expensive yellow urine or settled out in the tissues as toxic deposits). There are absolutely no synthetics or isolated nutrients whatsoever, the nutrients are exactly as they occur naturally in whole plant foods. This is a pet supplement/food that is ideal for both pet and human consumption, which provides essential nutrients often not available in commercial grade pet foods.

However, we are looking to expand our pet foods product line and we want to hear from you!! Please use the comments section of this posting, or email us and tell us which holistic pet foods or supplies you would like to see carried by Love Street, and why. To most pet people our pets are important members of our families, and we only want them to have the best - so help us provide the best foods, toys, supplies and supplements available for both you and your pet all in one place!

Here are some links that offer great info on health issues related to pet foods for our animal companions:

http://healthypetsnw.com/articles/commercial_foods.php
http://www.askvetadvice.com/recommended-healthy-pet-foods/
http://www.healthypetslife.com/blog/
http://www.hsus.org/pets/issues_affecting_our_pets/pet_overpopulation_and_ownership_statistics/us_pet_ownership_statistics.html

*This article contains excerpts from the above websites.