How safe is pet food?

The view that it’s better to be a vegetarian has been given a boost with the recent news that many ready meals contain horsemeat.   It’s not just the horror of eating horses but that they are often full of drugs that are dangerous to health.

Why is horsemeat unsafe to eat?  The world is such a crazy place that horses who are lame and in pain are routinely given phenylbutazone (which is the painkiller commonly called bute) so that their owners can still ride them and compete on them.  How mad is that?

Old horses are also given bute to dull the pain in their legs – usually caused by all the wear and tear that’s been inflicted by being raced and jumped and worked hard during their lifetime.   Horses are routinely broken in and ridden and worked when they are too young and this causes the damage to their joints later in life.  A horse has a large skeleton – their bones take a long time to mature and yet they are raced as two year olds.

So,many horses who go to the knacker’s yard will be full of bute and other nasty drugs – we didn’t know that their meat is in the human food chain, we have always known that horses go for pet food.

Manufacturing pet food is an unregulated industry – who knows what ‘animal derivatives’ comprise.   Or what effect consuming bute and other drugs and diseased cattle will have on our dogs and cats.  The advertising hype of herbal meadows and country kitchens is far removed from the reality of long journeys, ghastly abbattoirs and factory manufactured pre-shaped chunks.   Why people buy and consume food made in a factory and of unknown ingredients  is one of life’s mysteries.  Advertising!

There is an answer though – feed organic or ‘straight’ food – a piece of meat or fish, rice and vegetables – anything where the type of animal can be recognized.   It used to be enough to recommend that only food safe for human consumption should be bought for our pets, but no more.

Dogs and cats are carnivores – it’s time to buy meat for them where the animal of source is healthy, has had a good life and is from a species that can be recognized.    Has anyone seen the old movie Soylent Green?   It’s bound to come.