pets in pet food Re: Happy Hound food and sick dogs
Here is one vet's take on rendering of meat and bone meal, etc.
http://www.petmd.com/blogs/fullyvetted/2010/oct/rendered_barbiturates-10474
included in a 2004 report to Congress on the rendering industry, is how it happens at the level of the independent rendering plant:
These plants (estimated by NRA at 165 in the United States and Canada) usually collect material from other sites using specially designed trucks. They pick up and process fat and bone trimmings, inedible meat scraps, blood, feathers, and dead animals from meat and poultry slaughterhouses and processors (usually smaller ones without their own rendering operations), farms, ranches, feedlots, animal shelters, restaurants, butchers, and markets. As a result, the majority of independents are likely to be handling "mixed species." Almost all of the resulting ingredients are destined for nonhuman consumption (e.g., animal feeds, industrial products). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates animal feed ingredients, but its continuous presence in rendering plants, or in feed mills that buy rendered ingredients, is not a legal requirement.
(My bolding, btw.)
So how has this continued to pass under our radar? Those generic, unspecified proteins and fats included in your pet's food? They may well — legally — include canine and feline bodies. This may seem shocking to us . . . but this is business as ususal for the rendering industry.
If it’s always been done, why wring our hands over it now?
Salmonella has been implicated in some renal and liver failures in dogs, although prevailing buzz is that Salmonella is killed by doggy digestive tracts if the dogs are healthy enough. That being said, kibble is usually fed day after day, with no change of diet as there would be in a wild dog. Here is one link on liver failure:
http://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/endocrine/c_dg_cholangitis_cholangiohepatitis_syndrome
Jerky treats also have been implicated in organ failure in pets eating them.
A food that looks that bad could probably cause serious issues long term on it's own merit without salmonella. The digestible protein is probably way low and lacking in some amino acids. People shouldn't have dogs if they can't feed them properly.
