Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Feed Me Like a Wolf




"The preferred diet of the wolf is not cooked backstrap from the pride of the herd, but raw flesh ripped from the diseased rectum of a downer cow."


I am always a bit surprised at how many people have strong opinions about dog food, and how few of these opinions are actually supported by common sense.

For example, most dog food dogmatics are focused on dog food quality rather than quantity.

And yet, quality hardly matters as most dogs in this country (even most working dogs!) can easily have their nutritional needs met by grocery store kibble or carefully selected table scraps.

Which is not to say that everything is fine in the world of dog food.

The problem, however, is not too low a quality of food; it's too high a quality of food, and too much of it too.

Most dogs in this country are overfed.

Fat dogs are not only losing years off of their lives, but they are also costing their owners (and this nation) billions of dollars in unnecessary veterinary bills.

Most of the problem, of course, is that people are over-feeding their dogs out of guilt for spending too little time with them.

Another factor, however, is that many modern dog foods are packed with calories which means "just a little more" may end up putting on real pounds.

Add in the chronic lack of exercise that most dogs receive, and you have the same prescription for fat pooches as for obese humans.

It's not just too many calories, of course. Modern dog food is also loaded up with vitamins and calcium, and this triple combination means many large-breed dogs are growing up faster than God intended, and as a result they are suffering from increasing amounts of nutrition-related dysplasia.

Are canine web sites and list-servs abuzz about the need to feed dogs less in order to keep them in proper weight?

They are not. Up to 40 percent of the dogs in this country are over-weight, and obesity is the number one killer of dogs and people in this country, but that conversation tends to strike a little too close to home.

Put three people in a room and talk about obesity as a health issue, and at least one of those people is going to cop an attitude: Are you talking about me??!

Which circles back to the issue of dog food. What should you feed your dogs?

My standard answer has never varied: Whatever you want!

When people ask me when I feed my own dogs, I tell them grocery store kibble. What brand? I feed Purina at the moment, but what brand does not really matter so long as it's the house brand of a major manufacturer like Purina or Pedigree which work hard to control their supply chain.

Almost none of the "boutique" dog food companies make their own foods; they contract out with a nameless, faceless companies like Menu Foods or American Nutrition, Inc.,. which have no brand or history to protect, and are entirely mercenary when it comes to production.

Purina and Pedigree, by comparison, have their own manufacturing facilities, important historical brands to protect, and a decades-long track record with most suppliers.

Why do I feed my dogs kibble? Simple: Kibble has been treated with fire.

While cooking does not cure all ills, it cures most, and that is especially important with meat. The more you know about meat -- any kind of meat -- the more likely you are to order your steaks "well cooked."

I recommend buying from a grocery or "big box" store, because unlike food bought at pet stores and veterinary offices, the dog food at a grocery or big box store is rarely older than two weeks, and also tends to be cheaper.

Whatever brand of big-name kibble you choose to use, one thing is almost guaranteed: your dog will end up eating better than you do.

Not only is most grocery store dog food balanced for proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, but it has probably been tested under longitudinal trials involving thousands of dogs over many years.

Can most dog owners say that about the food they eat? I think not!

As for dog food being full of snouts, lungs, udders, and shin meat, it most certainly is. It also has chicken feet ground up in it, as well as bones and beaks, and pieces of tail, testicles and cow privates.

All of this is excellent food, and most of it was "human quality" until very recently.

Of course, we Americans now turn up our nose at such stuff. We demand that all meat be the very choicest cut served on a white napkin placed on top of a foam plate. The meat must be dyed the right color to make it pleasing to the eye, and the whole thing must be shrink-wrapped, dated, bar-coded and placed in a cold packing crate near the pass-through aisle in the super markey.

Only then will we buy it.

Blood and guts? Testicles and snout? Entrails and feet? Most Americans shudder at the parts of a pig or cow that nurtured our grandparents not so long ago.

Go overseas into the markets of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, however, and people are still eating everything, including the squeal.

Ox Tail soup? Bones for Ossobuco? Udders for sausage? Stomachs and lungs for Haggis? Testicles for breakfast? All good food.

What is laugh-track funny are the folks who pop up in every dog food debate to talk about the diet of wolves.

Now a wolf is not a dog -- a point I have made in several posts before -- but let's let that go. Let's talk about what wolves do eat, instead.

You see, whether wolves are chasing caribou in the Arctic, pulling down elk in the Yellowstone, or stalking buffalo in Kansas, they are all doing the same thing: they are looking for the young, the sick, and the infirm.

A downer cow? To a wolf that's the dinner bell ringing.

Yes, that's right: The preferred diet of the wolf is not cooked backstrap from the pride of the herd, but raw flesh ripped from the diseased rectum of a downer cow.

Funny how that fact never makes it into all these conversations about "natural" dog foods.

Nor is it ever mentioned that wolves eat a lot of rabbit, deer and rats riddled with round worms and other parasites. Disease? A wolf likes nothing better than a diseased animal; they are so much easier to catch.

Unlike your kibble-fed dog, wolves are not eating nice bits of flesh from healthy animals that have been given vaccines, regular vet checks, dosed with antibiotics, and given unlimited amounts of high-quality feed and clean water.

But that's what our dog food is made out of.

And then, to make it even better, we stir in corn, rice, and wheat in order to increase fiber and add carbohydrates. We also add in vitamins and micronutrients, as well as preservatives to keep the whole thing fresh. Then we grind it all fine, cook it, extrude it, fire it hard into bite-sized nuggets, and put it in hermetically-sealed stay-fresh bags.

Poor dogs! If only they had quality foods!

On the other side of the forest, far from freeway and factory, the wolf is gobbling down the worm-filled intestines of his downer cow elk. He will eventually eat nearly everything -- ears, eyes, genitals, anus, snout -- but right now he is focusing on the nice soft bits in the stomach cavity.

After his first meal, the carcass will be dragged under a bush to hide it from scavengers. Later, the wolf and his kin will return to gnaw on the rotting flesh that is now flyblown with maggots.

This is the "natural whole foods" of the wolf, and it is the ideal that the food romantics trot out on almost every occasion.

No doubt these folks are also Rousseau-romantics who think the Indians and the aborigines lived pristine lives without war and "at one with nature." Never mind the evidence to the contrary!

As for dogs, if they are not overfed, and are regularly exercised, they are probably fine with any store-bought food or carefully-selected set of table scraps.

Dried chicken mixed with rendered chicken fat is probably no worse than any other kinds of meat protein. Never mind that asian jungle fowl is not a natural diet for any canid -- it will do just as well as beef, lamb, deer, fish, horse, kangaroo or beaver.

As for millet or barley or pumpkin or potatoes, they are probably no worse (and no better) than corn, soy, rice or wheat.

If spending more on exotic-recipe dog foods makes you feel better about your dog and yourself, go ahead and do it. It will probably do the dog no harm.

That cannot be said if you feed your dog too much, however.

Remember it's generally not food quality that kills a dog, it's food quantity.

Too much food and too little excercise kills more dogs -- and more humans -- than anything else in this country.

And that's not about the FDA or the dog food companies; that's about us.



.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually. in many zoos, wolves get fed--along with some real meat supplements, a lot of high quality--- DOG KIBBLE! And before you EVEN start, Patrick, yes, I AM a REAL ZOOKEEPER(as well as a "REAL" musher!)L.B.

PBurns said...

I know you're a zoo keeper, but in North Carolina, I suspect mushing is a bit hard ;) We've got folks who come to this blog who currently keep 86 sled dogs. See the sleddog blog in the sidebar.

P.

Unknown said...

Great article! Thanks so much for the post! Ive been trying to describe this to friends and you just did it for me. I will gladly forward this blog!
manny

Fred said...

While I don't quite buy the big company equals better quality food argument, I don't believe in all the raw food hype either. Here's a link to a list of problems feeding raw meat can cause, and this from a vet that practices alternative medicine.

http://csuvets.colostate.edu/pain/Articlespdf/Problems%20with%20Raw%20Meat.pdf

PBurns said...

It's not that big companies are *necessarily* better than small companies, but that there are stronger incentives for a small company to cut corners and cheat, and a lot fewer people looking over anyone's shoulder to make sure no one does.

I speak from experience in the arena of fraud, as I sit at the crossroads of $2 to $3 billion worth of corporate fraud cases a year (all against the U.S. Government). Most are in the health arena (pharmaceutcals, medical devices, hospital billing), but a sizeable portion deal with weapons systems and assorted other odd things (such as resource extraction from public lands).

Though bigger companies yield bigger fraud cases (and bigger headlines), the smaller companies do more frauds. The reason for this is simple: to make $1 million off of $5 million worth of product you have to price-gouge more/or and cut back on quality while misrepresenting what you are selling. On the other hand, if you are trying to make $1 million in profit off of $50 million of product, you do not have to cut quite so many corners.

The pressure to price gouge and cut corners on quality and price is further exacerabated in a small company due to their capitalization needs. Small companies are generally trying to expand and to pay off sizeable capital costs. Small companies also have thinner track records of success, and so they must borrow money at a premium. Not for nothing are venture capitalists often called "vulture capitalists."

The potential for corporate fraud increases exponentially in a sitation where the small company is, essentially, just calling in its production order to a larger "anonymous" corporation like Menu Foods or American Nutrition, Inc.

Not only is the small "labeling" company incentivized to cut corners on quality while padding the price, so too is the actual manufacturer of the product (i.e. Menu Foods or American Nutrition, Inc.).

In cases like "Canine Caviar," where no one from the labeling company is even at the plant when the actual product is made made, it's "Betty Bar the Door."

While there is a LOT of pressure on a small company like Canine Caviar to cut corners and pad prices, larger companies like Purina and Pedigree have fewer incentives to do so.

For one thing, they already own their manufacturing equipment. The core machinery for grinding, extruding, spraying, cooking, mixing and bagging may be decades old and already paid for.

In addition, the cost of capital for these companies is pretty low, as everyone knows these long-standing companies are not going to go belly up overnight.

Another factor is that accountability in these big firms is not only implicit, it is explicit. Not only have the same workers been at the same jobs for years, but the same slaughter houses and feed mills have been supplying the source products for decades. Every bag is run with a production code, and every bag can be traced to a worker, a food source, and a retail destination. Every shift has a manager, and every manager has a "big boss" making sure that the recipe is followed. The company's name is on the bag, and the worker and mamager can be traced straight to the bag. There are not ambigious relationships or baked-in conflicts of interest.

Firms that do not make their own food not only do not know the workers who actually make their product, they do not know the source of much of the source material going into that food. The workers mixing the food are not loyal to the label; they are loyal to the anonymous manufacturer (i.e. Menu Foods or American Nutrition, Inc.) that has actually hired them. The results are predictable.

Finally, we come to the issue of quality control. A big company can afford to have feed trials and labs on site. A small company has to put all of its money into contract sales representatives. There probably are no feed trials, and there's probably no testing.

Patrick

Anonymous said...

@Patrick

I heard that feeding trials are for short periods of time, not the life of the dogs. As long as the dogs live through the trial, then the food is considered compliant with the AAFCO. Is this true? And is there any follow up with the same dogs over a period of years? I heard Purina did a study about longevity but never stated which food they used as the basis of their study (@ least I can't find it on their website).

Robert

PBurns said...

Yes, all AFCO feed trials are not very long. I do not rate them much as science, but I think it says a LOT about a dog food company if they will not shell out for this minimal level of testing.

Dog food is mostly tested in a "Phase IV" method, which is to say that it is tested in the real world by people who feed their dogs the food over a lifetime. One reason to go to a company that has been around a long time (like Purina) is that not only have they probably worked out their production chains, and are making the dog food themselves, but they also have scores of millions of dogs that have lived long productive lives on their food.


P

Jackie S. Quire said...

I'm a new reader, so forgive me if you've mentioned this elsewheres...

I had always been told the more expensive kibble brands are better for dogs, and a symptom of that was that they produced less waste.

And within the past month, I ran out of the normal food I buy my dog (a corgi/sheltie mix who normally survives on Purina or the like) some no name department store brand.

The amount of waste that came out of that beast (and not just in the first 'transition' couple of days or week) was unreal. I thought surely he must not be absorbing ANY nutrients.

So I switched him (again, yes....) to a lower-end boutique brand (highest protein of all three foods). There was a remarkable difference.

Is this a protein thing? A brand thing? A me thing? A him thing?

Does it make any sense to you?

Thanks for the posts, much appreciated!

PBurns said...

Food is fat, protein, carbohyrdates and fiber. Within these bounds, numbers go up and down and some things are more digestable than others, but NO dog food has been found to be better than another despite a LOT of incentive to be able to make that claim.

As for the size of dog turds, some people seem very interested in making them disappear or get smaller, but I am not sure why. Any dog that does not crap is going to die, and I personally toss a big one with as little effort as a small one.

In truth, most dogs need more fiber and less fat in their diets. Over a 1/3 of all dogs in America are FAT and that is the number one canine health issue, same as it is for humans. More fiber can cure a lot of problems, both human and canine.


P.