Demonization of pet food ingredients

Marketing campaigns

More of the ingredients have to appeal to the consumer as ingredients found in their own kitchen. From a past tense to a present tense, were or are the ingredients used in premium pet foods not of high-quality? The implications in some marketing campaigns suggest they were not and might not be.

Consumer education

After visiting over 500 plants in my career, I have to say this concern is just not valid in the pet food plants. The ingredients are often the same used in a human food plant. There are obvious differences in that animal and pet foods also use fully acceptable, high-quality secondary products that would not have use in human foods. Examples like:

• rendered meat meals from many sources;
• higher bone containing meat parts;
• pulp from beet sugar processing;
• spray dried brewer’s yeast;
• rendered fats and oils from chicken, fish or beef.

Many of these are given negative connotation from internet ‘experts’ that draw large crowds to their lack of nutrition or food understanding. These experts go further by attacking ingredients clearly found in human food plants (potato, tapioca, peas, etc.) because these ingredients might not meet their inexperienced nutritional bent and website perception. With the lack of consumer education that exists in the pet food market, consumers are drawn to almost anything said on these unchecked and edited websites.

Demonized

A far more concerning situation exists when ingredients are ‘demonized’. This would mean that something is portrayed as evil, bad or threatening even with the possibility that they are categorically not harmful. In my experience, this started in the late 1980s with marketing campaigns about corn and soybean.

The claim made was corn was not digested well by pets as were many other starches. That misinformation led to blaming corn for hot spots in pets. Another ‘fact’ that has never been challenged. The truth was that dogs are able to digest 98% of well-cooked corn and corn also provides a high content of nutritionally valuable corn oil. There is no connection in nutrition suggesting otherwise.

The point is that marketing campaigns should focus on high quality ingredients, experienced formulation, pet nutrition understanding, consistent and clean processing and even variety. Campaigns that have focused on the attack of ingredients have hurt the industry long-term as good quality ingredients which are nutritionally sound are not even considered due to the market damage caused by negative demonization.

Regulatory environment

Another issue facing the pet food industry is the innovation of new ingredients and the process to gain approval in the current regulatory environment. For instance, with the demonization of corn and corn protein, the industry needed other vegetable proteins to help balance the mineral load when high level of meat products were formulated. Pea and potato proteins were a natural fit as solutions. A long and expensive regulatory approval process has ensued. Other vegetable proteins might not want to go down that pathway.

Inconsistencies

In the USA, we have a listing of approved ingredients by AAFCO, but that list is extremely short compared to what is accepted in the human food business. Many inconsistencies exist between the two lists. Naming of ingredients is confusing and inconsistent. As an example, pea protein will be called a ‘pulse’ protein. I am not sure how many consumers will know what that is.

Serious review and revision

The regulatory approval process for new ingredients needs serious review and revision. The current processes do not allow for quick approval of starches, proteins and fats. These long timelines are an antithesis to innovation and leave the petfood business without viable solutions to meet the needs of consumers, quality and safety. Additionally, the more ingredients are demonized without cause, the harder it will be to make high-quality, consistent products.