All pet foods must list the ingredients present in the food. The ingredients must be listed in order of weight. This is one of the best ways to determine the quality of the food. With a little knowledge of the ingredients, you can choose a food that is highly digestible and free of unwanted products. Be careful of one tactic used by manufacturers to disguise less desirable ingredients. Breaking an ingredient into several different smaller ingredients and listing them individually is used to lower these undesirable ingredients farther down the ingredient list. For example, a product list could contain chicken, ground corn, corn gluten, ground wheat, corn bran, wheat flour, wheat middling, etc. If we were to group all of the corn ingredients as one, they would probably far out-weigh the amount of chicken and wheat. As a consumer, you must read all of the ingredients carefully including the ingredients at the end, to know the type of preservatives and colorings that are used. Listed below are ingredients that you are likely to find on pet food labels:

• Meat is the clean flesh of slaughtered animals (chicken, cattle, lamb, turkey, etc.). The flesh can include striated skeletal muscle, tongue, diaphragm, heart, esophagus, overlying fat and the skin, sinew, nerves and blood vessels normally found with that flesh.
• Meat by-products are clean parts of slaughtered animals, not including meat. These include lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, liver, blood, bone, and stomach and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth, or hooves.
• Poultry by-products are clean parts of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, and internal organs (like heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, abdomen, and intestines). It does not contain feathers.
• Fish meal is the clean ground tissue of undecomposed whole fish or fish cuttings, with or without the oil extracted.
• Beef tallow is fat derived from beef.
• Ground corn is the entire corn kernel ground or chopped.
• Corn gluten meal is the by-product after the manufacture of corn syrup or starch, and is the dried residue after the removal of the bran, germ, and starch.
• Brewers rice is the small fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from larger kernels of milled rice.
• Soybean meal is a by-product of the production of soybean oil.
• Ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative that is used to prevent spoilage in dog food.
• Tocopherols (e.g., vitamin E) are naturally occurring compounds used as natural preservatives.

Just like humans, your pets need fresh, clean, healthy food. Consider supplementing a quality natural/veg commercial food with fresh leftovers from your own varied vegetarian diet. The lack of nutrients from fresh whole food is probably a secondary factor to the rampant disease among dogs and cats. Pet owners and veterinary professionals have a right to know what they are feeding their animals. The pet food label contains a wealth of information if one knows how to read it. Do not be swayed by the many marketing gimmicks or eye-catching claims. If there is a question about the product, contact the manufacturer or ask an appropriate regulatory agency.

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