Pet Food Regulations (Partial Excerpt from Chapter Four) Like millions of pet owners, I was under the impression that the pet food industry was regulated to the extent that human foods are regulated. I assumed that government agencies oversaw the ingredients that go into the food we feed our companion animals. According to a document put out by Purina, ?Pet foods are among the most highly regulated products on the market.?(1) As much as I want to believe this statement, my research finds otherwise. If we are to believe what we read, the pet food industry in the United States is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act; and the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. In addition, voluntary regulations for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and state regulations are established by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). Impressive as all of this sounds, none of these agencies actually regulate what ingredients are contained in rendering products sold to commercial pet food companies for use in pet food. The FDA and AAFCO are supposed to be the driving forces in the regulations on pet food. According to Linda Grassie, spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration, Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA / CVM,) the position of the agency is to ?establish standards for all animal feeds; proper identification of the product as a pet food: net quality statement (weight, volume, or count); name and place of business of the manufacturer; packer or distributor; and proper listing of all ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight and identification by their common or usual names.? (2) However, the FDA does not test nor investigate as to what are the contents of the products from rendering plants nor the quality of the ingredients. In brief, I found no laws that state diseased cattle and companion animals cannot be rendered and used for pet foods. In the case of companion animals, no government agencies oversee the numbers of carcasses sent to rendering plants and no records are kept. All the states that responded to my inquiries agree that there are no regulations that prohibit the rendering of any animal, including dogs and cats. In this chapter I explain how these various agencies are involved in the regulation of pet food. As you will see, shockingly, there are very few regulations for protecting our pets from unhealthy or harmful material that can be legally rendered into products sold for manufacturing pet food.

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