Choosing a Dog Food for Your Labrador Retriever

Commercial Dog Food Ingredients    Choosing the Right Dog Food

Feed your Labrador Retrievers and Labrador Puppies only the best dog foods made from human grade products!!

The following summarizes information from the Animal Protection Institute Website.

Commercial Dog Food Ingredients & Processing

Many nutritional problems appeared with the popularity of cereal-based commercial pet foods. Some have occurred because the diet was incomplete. Although several ingredients are now supplemented, it is not known what ingredients future researchers may discover that should have been supplemented in pet foods all along. Other problems may result from reactions to additives. Others are a result of contamination with bacteria, mold, drugs, or other toxins. In some diseases the role of commercial pet food is understood; in others, it is not. Commercially manufactured or rendered meat meals and by-product meals are frequently highly contaminated with bacteria because their source is not always slaughtered animals. Animals that have died because of disease, injury, or natural causes are a source of meat for meat meal. The dead animal might not be rendered until days after its death. Therefore the carcass is often contaminated with bacteria such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli. Dangerous E. Coli bacteria are estimated to contaminate more than 50% of meat meals. While the cooking process may kill bacteria, it does not eliminate the endotoxins some bacteria produce during their growth and are released when they die. These toxins can cause sickness and disease. Pet food manufacturers do not test their products for endotoxins. Do you want to take a chance and feed this to your Labrador Retrievers or Labrador Puppies? To make pet food nutritious, pet food manufacturers must "fortify" it with vitamins and minerals. This is necessary because the ingredients they are using are not wholesome, their quality may be extremely variable, and the harsh manufacturing practices destroy many of the nutrients the food had to begin with. Fortunately, not all of the pet food manufacturing companies use these poor quality or potentially dangerous ingredients.  Although the purchase price of pet food does not always determine whether a pet food is good or bad, the price is often a good indicator of quality. It would be impossible for a company that sells a generic brand of dog food at $9.95 for a 40-lb. bag to use quality protein and grain in its food. On the other hand, there are many well-known, expensive dog food brands containing the above questionable ingredients.  You must review ingredients and processing methods very carefully! Back to top

Ingredients The pet food industry is an extension of the human food and agriculture industries. Pet food provides a market for: slaughterhouse offal - bones, blood, intestines, lungs, ligaments, and almost all the other parts not generally consumed by humans grains considered "unfit for human consumption," and similar waste products. The pet food manufacturers call these products  "by-products," "meat-and-bone-meal," or similar names. Many of these remnants provide a questionable source of nourishment for our animals.  The nutritional quality of meat and poultry by-products, meals, and digests can vary from batch to batch. Meat and poultry meals, by-product meals, and meat-and-bone meal are common ingredients in pet foods. The term "meal" means that these materials are not used fresh, but have been rendered. Rendering  may alter or destroy some of the natural enzymes and proteins found in the raw ingredients. Meat and poultry by-products, while not rendered, vary widely in composition and quality. Some veterinarians claim that feeding slaughterhouse wastes to animals increases their risk of getting cancer and other degenerative diseases. The cooking methods used by pet food manufacturers do not necessarily destroy the hormones used to fatten livestock or increase milk production, or drugs such as antibiotics or the barbiturates used to euphemize animals. Back to top

Animal and Poultry Fat Rendered animal fat, restaurant grease, or other oils too rancid or deemed inedible for humans are also used in manufacturing dog food. Restaurant grease has become a major component of feed grade animal fat over the last fifteen years. This grease may be kept outside for weeks, exposed to extreme temperatures with no regard for its future use. "Fat blenders" or rendering companies then pick up this used grease and mix the different types of fat together, stabilize them with powerful antioxidants to retard further spoilage, and then sell the blended products to pet food companies. These fats are sprayed directly onto extruded kibbles and pellets to make an otherwise bland or distasteful product palatable. The fat also acts as a binding agent to which manufacturers add other flavor enhancers.

Wheat, Corn and Other Vegetable Protein The availability of nutrients in these products is dependent upon the digestibility of the grain. Dogs almost completely absorb carbohydrates from some grains, such as white rice, while 20% of the nutritional value of other grains can escape digestion. The nutrients in potatoes and corn are far less available than those in rice. Some ingredients that have have no significant nutritional value are used as fillers. Two of the top three ingredients in pet foods, particularly dry foods, are almost always some form of ground corn or corn gluten meal. This is because corn is a much cheaper energy source than meat, not because it adds much in the way of nutrients. The grain that goes into many dog foods is not a high quality grain.  There have been cases where a fungus contaminated wheat, producing toxic substances, triggering the recall of dry dog food.  These toxins can cause vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, liver damage and lameness.  In one case, a toxin found in one brand of dog food  killed 25 dogs. Back to top

Additives and Preservatives Many chemicals are added to commercial pet foods to improve the taste, stability, characteristics, or appearance of the food but  provide no nutritional value. In the last 40 years, the number of food additives has greatly increased. Commercial pet foods are preserved with either synthetic or "natural" preservatives. Synthetic preservatives include butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), propyl gallate, propylene glycol (also used as a less-toxic version of automotive antifreeze), and ethoxyquin. For these antioxidants, there is little information documenting their toxicity, safety, interactions, or chronic use in pet foods that may be eaten every day for the life of the animal. The potentially cancer-causing agents such as BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin are permitted at relatively low levels. The use of these chemicals in pet foods has not been thoroughly studied, and long term build-up of these agents may ultimately be harmful. Some pet food critics and veterinarians believe that ethoxyquin is a major cause of disease, skin problems, and infertility in dogs. Ethoxyquin is approved for use in human food for preserving spices, such as cayenne and chili powder, at a level of 100 ppm -- but it would be very difficult to consume as much chili powder every day as a dog would eat dry food. In response to consumer concern, some manufacturers are now using "natural" preservatives such as Vitamin C (ascorbate), Vitamin E (mixed tocopherols), and oils of rosemary, clove, or other spices, to preserve the fats in their products. While the preservations used by the dog food manufacturer are listed on the label some ingredients may be individually preserved. Most fish meal, and some prepared vitamin-mineral mixtures, contain chemical preservatives. This means that your companion animal may be eating food containing several types of preservatives. Federal law requires all preservatives to be disclosed on the label; however, pet food companies only recently started to comply with this law. Some other additives found in processed pet foods

Anticaking agents, Antimicrobial agents, Antioxidants, Coloring agents, Curing agents, Drying agents, Emulsifiers, Firming agents, Flavor enhancers, Flavoring agents, Flour treating agents, Formulation aids, Humectants, Leavening agents, Lubricants, Nonnutritive sweeteners, Nutritive sweeteners, Oxidizing and reducing agents, pH control agents, Processing aids, Sequestrants, Solvents, vehicles, Stabilizers, thickeners, Surface active agents, Surface finishing agents, Synergists, Texturizers.

While the law requires studies of direct toxicity of these additives and preservatives, they have not been tested for their potential synergistic effects on each other once ingested. Natural preservatives do not provide as long a shelf life as chemical preservatives, but they are safe. Back to top

The Manufacturing Process Processing meat and by-products used in pet food can greatly diminish their nutritional value, but cooking increases the digestibility of cereal grains. Most dry food is made with a machine called an expander or extruder. First, raw materials are blended, sometimes by hand, other times by computer, in accordance with a recipe developed by animal nutritionists. This mixture is fed into an expander and steam or hot water is added. The mixture is subjected to steam, pressure, and high heat as it is extruded through dies that determine the shape of the final product and puffed like popcorn. The food is allowed to dry, and then is usually sprayed with fat, digests, or other compounds to make it more palatable. Although the cooking process may kill bacteria in pet food, the final product can lose its sterility during the subsequent drying, fat coating, and packaging process. A few foods are baked at high temperatures rather than extruded. This produces a dense, crunchy kibble that is palatable without the addition of sprayed on palatability enhancers. Animals can be fed about 25% less of a baked food, by volume (but not by weight), than an extruded food. Ingredients are similar for wet, dry, and semi-moist foods, although the ratios of protein, fat, and fiber may change. The main difference between the types of food is the water content. It is nearly impossible to directly compare labels from different kinds of food. Back to top

Choosing a Commercial Dog Food

Here for our Labrador Retrievers and Labrador Puppies, we recommend (and feed our Labrador Retrievers) about 50% home made dog food from fresh ingredients.  Our recipe:  1 cup of cooked beef, turkey or chicken plus 1 cup of mixed vegetables for each 1 cup of brown rice.  We usually make enough for 3 or 4 days at a time and store the ingredients separately in the refrigerator, soaked with the broth made from bones that have been simmered for 2 hours to extract calcium.   We add 1 T. per meal of Wellness Super 5 Canine Supplement. As to the other 50%, we feed and recommend Canine Caviar. It may be necessary to request a special order but this is an excellent food at a surprisingly reasonable price, making the extra trouble well worthwhile. Some other excellent dog foods made with human grade products are Innova and Wellness.  There are several others available at stores that carry only the healthiest dog food and treats. The following summarizes recommendations of the Animal Protection Institute. Choose foods with an AAFCO guarantee that indicates the food was tested using feeding tests. Choose "Holistic" foods. For Labrador puppies, choose foods with higher protein and lower calcium made for large breed puppies. Avoid foods with "by-product meal" or "meat & bone meal". Avoid foods that have by-products as its main source of protein. Choose foods that list meats by name such as chicken or chicken meal (as opposed to "meat" or "meat meal") as their first ingredient. Avoid generic brands as they often contain the lower quality rejects of the big manufactures, which were originally selected as they were not fit for human consumption. Hmm, feed my Labrador Retrievers or Labrador puppies the rejections of the rejected? No Way. Avoid foods synthetically preserved - look for Vitamin C & E instead. Check the expiration date.Feeding Recommendations Store dry dog food in an airtight container. Change brands every 3 or 4 months to avoid nutrition deficiencies (be sure to make the change over 4 or 5 days). Watch for changes in your dog  (coat, energy levels, mood, appetite, etc.). Feed twice a day rather than just once. Add some high protein canned food a few times a week. Consider preparing some of your dog's food yourself - perhaps 3 or 4 meals a week.

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