Dateline 5/21/07 A prominent Florida law firm has filed a Class Action Lawsuit against the $16 billion dollar a year pet food industry, specifically the pet food companies and retailers.  The suit alleges premium-grade pet food labeled and promoted as "Complete and Balanced" has “Historically Contained Such Items as Euthanized Dogs and Cats, Restaurant Grease, Hair, Hooves, and Diseased Animals, and Other Inedible Garbage.”  The action specifies a long list of food industry giants by name.

The Miami firm of Maltzman Foreman PA point out the defendants claim the foods contain “choice cuts of prime beef, chunks of chicken, fish, fresh wholesome vegetables and whole grains” but their Plaintiffs say the food actually contains "inedible slaughterhouse waste products of the human food chain such as spines, heads, tails, hooves, hair, and blood.”  The suit states in part “rendering companies … also added other inedible ‘waste’ such as euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarian offices and animal shelters …”

This is news?  Not.  Major websites such as TheDogPlace (links below) have presented the sickening facts for nearly a decade.  It also helped break this story “It isn’t just the remains of someone’s pet… he could be ingesting pentobarbital, the lethal drug used to euthanize pets. 

That gruesome fact is more than sickening.  It can be deadly to pets that eat the food.  Quoting from reporter Jamie Allmar, KMOV TV, “It's a sad secret kept by most animal shelters run by local governments.  The dogs and cats they put to death go to one place, a rendering plant in Millstadt, Illinois where their bodies are boiled down into raw materials that could be winding up in pet food.” 

TheDogPlace (Dog Eat Dog*) article explains “Like many other dark secretes that affect the food you and I eat, the Food and Drug Administration appears to ignore the problem.  The FDA claimed that drugs like sodium pentobarbital, which is used to kill the animals, did not survive the rendering process. Now the FDA has proof that it does.  We learn that test results in 1998 have been kept secrete and that "several retail feeds were confirmed for the presence of pentobarbital which could have only come from euthanized animals.”

Class Counsel for Maltzman Foreman, Catherine J. MacIvor says "The melamine debacle is not the only serious problem with pet food. The number and frequency of lethal pet food recalls in the last few years clearly shows the seriousness and extent of this problem." Indeed it does.  But aflatoxin and waste from the slaughterhouse floor is almost understandable compared to the esthetic and medically abhorrent practice of feeding euthanized pets to other pets.

Cattle and dairy farmers learned the hard way. Indeed, there exists serious concern that the practice of feeding cows to cows may have led to the spread of Mad Cow Disease. 

The Class Action suit points out that today’s pet foods are “largely carbohydrates and sugars combined with toxic preservatives and additives with very little to no meat at all.”  Dedicated breeders know how to read labels.  In fact, most have been so turned off by that knowledge they feed human-grade foodstuffs.  Most cat breeder-exhibitors know cats require more meat than dogs.  Cats simply do not thrive on today’s plethora of “junk food” and in fact, wild cats die if fed “cat food.”  Dog owners, let that be food for thought. We have domesticated dogs even better than ourselves, therefore they tolerate more but at what cost?   

Follow this developing story in The National Pet Press, a bi-weekly newspaper delivered to your door! 

If you are concerned for your pet’s safety and health, it only takes thirty minutes to grasp the basics.  Go directly to the most complete index of pet food truths - TheDogPlace Canine Nutrition & Dog Food

* http://www.thedogplace.org/Articles/Andrews/Dog.Eat.Dog_02.htm