E337- What Makes Dog Food Safe… or Dangerous With Susan Thixton

[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so, well, thank you for coming on the NoBed Dog's podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: A couple of people had had mentioned you over the years of my dog life, if you will.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you got to check out her yearly list of all the great things that she reviews and does a lot of research on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, if you don't mind, Susan, if you could give us an intro to the people listening and
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm a dog food and cat food consumer advocate and what that means is I argue with regulatory authorities because of what they allow in pet food.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a lawyer, but I've researched the laws
[SPEAKER_00]: And the FDA and state authorities, each state department of agriculture, they openly allow pet food to violate federal law with no disclosure to the consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it hinders people from being able to make informed decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everybody has that right to choose whatever kind of pet food they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if the information about that product is being intentionally with help, that's a whole different ball game.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I argue with them on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got started on this path because of Petfood killed my dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was many years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vet back then knew more about Petfood than most
[SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed a lump on this dog's pelvic bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a dog trainer at the time, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this dog was my teacher dog, you know, I would teach obedience classes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was my example dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed, so she was my business partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed a lump on her pelvic bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: took her to the vet and he said it's bone cancer and you have about two weeks to tell her goodbye.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just horrified and what, you know, what, what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: What caused this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said more than likely it was caused by a chemical preservative used in pet fit, commonly used in pet fit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how did he quite understand?
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, how did he, how does he know that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what kind of what was a certain type of cancer that's related to linked to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm assuming so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't go into that at the time because I didn't know to, you know, and he explained that the chemical preservative is used to extend the shelf life of a pet fruit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't quite understand what shelf life was, but I made my first phone call to a pet food company and asked them what the shelf life was of this dog food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was a leading brand that everybody would recognize.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they very proudly told me the food would stay fresh for 25 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, three times longer than my dog lived.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those words just changed my whole future, absolutely, and my dog dying, this vet gave me books.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when the internet came around, I could access scientific papers, but I really connected and resonated with the laws of pet food and how laws were not being abated by.
[SPEAKER_00]: had owner sent me to my first pet food regulatory meeting in 2009.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe was my first regulatory meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been going ever since.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the more you peel back the layers of the
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very unfortunate system for pet owners who are really just trying to do the best they can for their dog or cat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's what I've realized over the years, Susan, is the more people I talked to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of times, even unrelated to nutrition or food for dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: We organically, inevitably, get into this conversation of food is medicine and our dogs are obviously eating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, first of all, they don't have a choice, you get what you get and
[SPEAKER_02]: They're also eating this, you know, at least once a day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some, you know, a lot of people feed twice a day.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so what, what were the, when you started kind of knocking on these doors and phoning people and these companies were like, proud that their shelf life of their food can stay stable for 25 years, what, what was your next move?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how did you proceed into going, wait a minute?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're proud of this and this killed my dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm out for blood.
[SPEAKER_02]: It kind of seems like what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what was your next move after you realized the food that you bought your food, your dog, ended up killing your dog from cancer?
[SPEAKER_02]: What did that look like after?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't out for blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't that attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the attitude of,
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to tell as many people as I can, so that they don't go through what I went through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I first did was try to learn about this chemical preservative.
[SPEAKER_00]: The name of it is a foxaquin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is still used in pepper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You used to see it a lot on the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it is more used as a preservative.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be used for rendered ingredients, meat meals,
[SPEAKER_00]: It can also be used in fish meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the ingredient supplier adds the preservative, a toxic one, it doesn't have to be disclosed on the pet food label.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one thing led me to another, when doing research on a toxic one, then one thing led you to another, you uncover many different hills of the industry,
[SPEAKER_00]: which is what I continue to do is talk to people within the industry, it's been very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had the fortune, good fortune, of being able to talk to actual employees who work down in the plant, who are actually making the pet food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've taught me a lot of what
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you find?
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the most alarming things that you've found talking to these employees of the plants?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grains, okay, as an example, many pet foods use grains.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the grains are delivered in this, this is done in human food as well too,
[SPEAKER_00]: are often they're also delivered by rail cars to pet food manufacturing plants.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do a Google Earth look at manufacturing facilities you'll see that many of them there's railroad tracks near the plant and that's because these ingredients come in on rail cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those real cars of grains, of course, with grains, you would expect, you know, they can be contaminated with bugs and maybe rats.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they fumigate the ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a common fumigate used in pet food is aluminum phosphide.
[SPEAKER_00]: It produces a very toxic gas called phosphine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And employees at one particular plant, there are all these state regulations that require the rail card to be properly aerated after it's been fumigated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the ingredients are unloaded, that gas doesn't come into the plant and harm the employees.
[SPEAKER_00]: This particular pet food plant did not properly aerate the rail cars
[SPEAKER_00]: Employees wore meters these fostering gas meters and they would alarm if they got to a certain level and their meters were going off on a regular basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was told that the the the aluminum phosphate is a pellet that's spread out on the grain dumped on top of the grain and and with moisture and humidity it fumigates.
[SPEAKER_00]: turns to a gas, and they would just process the pet food before the pellets had dissolved.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that meant that fumigant was not only in the pet food, not only in the pet food, but in the pet food, and what harm that causes to pets, I have no clue, but very startling information
[SPEAKER_00]: rendered ingredients are to me the absolute worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done again Google Earth Images of these rendering facilities and you see piles of animal carcass parts, blood, domed in a parking lot and they're bulldozed into a pit, ground,
[SPEAKER_00]: cooked and sold to pet food consumers with a picture of a steak on the label are roasted chicken on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My cat keeps getting up on my desk.
[SPEAKER_00]: She does this every time.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you see a tail walk by it's my cat.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm used to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: My cat usually does that to me to especially when I'm doing something important that I need to focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what cats do the best
[SPEAKER_02]: So what you're saying is that the grain that comes in on these rail cars on a via train tracks goes into this facility and in order to kill the bugs or rats or mice or whatever's in there, they're fumigating the grain and the employees are getting contaminated from this fumigation process.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we also don't know like that fumigation of killing all these things is in the grain that goes into our dog food.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an employee once told me that a load of grain pet food is allowed by regulation to use any grade of grain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Human food is only allowed to use the highest quality of grain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pet food can use inequality.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this particular load of grain, it was full of dead rats.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been fumigated, which killed all the rats.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's slats in the ground where they unload the grain on top of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's probably six inches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, now she moves the camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's right behind my computer causing havoc.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were so many dead rats in this particular load of grain that they had to put an additional screen on top of the grading where the grain goes into and then conveys, take it into a bin.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the rats were clogging the grading and they'd have to stop the unload and put pick out all the dead rats and they said they had several five gallon buckets full of dead rats that was in this
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's nasty.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is and I think more importantly to like the rats are one thing, right, but the fact that they're fumigating this grain that kills all those animals those little rats or sometimes big rats is more disturbing to me because I didn't know that that was a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and then you move to the, is that like, excuse me, the, the same thing as like the, the buy product of, when you were talking about the, the parking lots filled with dead carcasses, what kind of animals are we talking about here because I've heard that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll, this is kind of what we're having this conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've heard that pet food companies are allowed a certain amount of.
[SPEAKER_02]: deceased animals in their byproduct, which is kind of like a filler that they can call, as you said, stake or chicken.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've also heard that there's a certain amount of percentage that dead canines and felines can also go into this byproduct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what's going on when you're talking about these parking lots filled with?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's the trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what animals are there.
[SPEAKER_00]: third party verification system that a regulatory authority that is overseeing what is in these rendered ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're cooked and they become a powder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like dirt rendered meat meals look like dirt and it's a powdered meat substance.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have found
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, analysis done by University of New Mexico found dog DNA in several dog foods, which is just horrifying, but in the FDA allows disease animals and animals that have died other than by slaughter into all animal feed, not just dog and cat food.
[SPEAKER_00]: um, without disclosure to the consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the part that gets me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, for one, it's illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Federal law defines food as anything consumed by humans and animals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Food law states that no diseased animal or animal that has died by solder can be included in a food.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it is, it's adulterated and illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the FDA chooses, they call it selective enforcement.
[SPEAKER_00]: They look the other way and allow this, it's garbage, it's waste to be disposed of in the pet food with no disclosure to the consumer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would assume, because everybody that I've talked to about this in one way or another.
[SPEAKER_02]: The same thing with medication as well, say they were people, I just assumed that these laws, or I'm sorry, these governed properties.
[SPEAKER_02]: The afkoes and some of the other organizations, USDA, I'm sure are somehow getting paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: buy these companies one way or another.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if you know anything about that, but I've kind of started digging around inevitably finding that, you know, rather this food companies on the board of this, which then donates this much money, and it's politics, essentially.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen any of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but I would agree with you that more than likely that is happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with this animal waste, with the diseased animals and animals that have died other than a slaughter, being allowed, even though it's a violation of federal law and multiple state laws, it is waste disposal.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are millions and millions of pounds
[SPEAKER_00]: of this waste that has to be disposed of from diseased animals they can't put it in landfill because it could contaminate the ground waterways, the air depending on what the disease was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it has to be disposed of some way and to me they look at it as
[SPEAKER_00]: the lesser of eagles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dump it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dispose of it into animal food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just pet food.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also livestock feed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's significant for our food too because our food animals are consuming the same waste ingredient that federal losses they should not
[SPEAKER_02]: And first thing that comes in mind, if dog food companies are using diseased animals of the origin we don't know, and they're paying probably nothing for getting it donated, even.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they take all these carcasses of these animals, and we don't know where they're coming from, and we don't even know what they are, and maybe the people work there don't either know what they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're pushing them in this pile, and then they render them down into the rendered animal byproduct.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they cook it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: At that point, it's like, not only do we not know what these animals are, how they died or what diseases they had that killed them, but there's gotta be no nutritional value.
[SPEAKER_02]: to an animal at that point after they've been rendered down so much anyway, it's just pain, it's essentially junk food.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like eating Doritos every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, yeah, it kind of checks that box of, I feel fulfilled for right now, and this taste yummy, but because it's all the salt and the flavorings and the dyes and it looks good, but the nutritional value,
[SPEAKER_02]: can't be there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, is there a lot of I don't agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it does meet numbers like it will analyze as protein.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will analyze as fat.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the meats, the fat when when they cook this stuff,
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate to compare it to cooking soup, but when you cook a big soup the fat rises to the the top of the pot so they separate that out and the fat is a separate product so it's also in the fat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so it's yeah, but it meets numbers it analyzes.
[SPEAKER_00]: by the criteria that regulators require.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's supposed to contain, and maybe there are still remaining amino acids.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not a scientist, so I can't really address that kind of stuff, but it meets the numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Minimum protein, things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, and, and, okay, so here's the next question is pet owner, you know, dog owners are listening to this podcast and I've talked about it before and it just seems like I continue to go down this nutritional path because I find it important, but also I think a lot of people are kind of whistle blowing and coming out and saying, hey, just so you know your dog food that you're feeding your dog is coming from a pile of carcasses from the land of unknown.
[SPEAKER_02]: that has had potentially been killed by a disease, a deadly disease, obviously, and carcasses of the unknown put into a parking lot and then boil down and then grind it up and then put in your dog food on top of the rat infested poisoned grain, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So we can all agree, like, ooh, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Tom, that sounds like crap.
[SPEAKER_02]: What can dog owners do right now?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what should dog owners be doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure not all cable is the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, all food is the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: The process may be the same of how they get it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They put it out an extruder and it's cooked down and steamed or turning the powder or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what should dog owners be doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think we can all agree that that process sounds awful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think anybody wants to give their dogs that.
[SPEAKER_02]: What can people be doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: What should they be doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: What should they be looking for?
[SPEAKER_02]: How can they find, if, you know, people care about their dogs obviously?
[SPEAKER_02]: How can they find a better option?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well before I answer that I want to give a little background to is every ingredient in pet food has its own legal definition.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is
[SPEAKER_00]: in most cases, very different from the same food in human food.
[SPEAKER_00]: As example, chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see many labels that say, made with real chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: What that means is made with real pet food chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: A legal definition of human food chicken requires it to be USDA inspected in paths.
[SPEAKER_00]: The legal definition of pet food chicken holds no such requirement.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be condemned chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be chicken skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be chicken bones instead of meat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chicken is this wide, wide definition in pet food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is not held to the same standard as human food.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first thing, and this is for every single ingredient, you put that bag over and you read that long list of ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each one of those ingredients, the legal definition is different than in your food.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the mindset has to be, when that label says made with real chicken,
[SPEAKER_00]: They mean made with pet food chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are pet foods out there that are held to the same laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to put the same word chicken on their label.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they use human grade chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: They use ingredients that all meet the same safety standards and legal standards of human food.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are not allowed to disclose that like in an ingredient list.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't put human-grade chicken or USDA-inspected and past.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not allowed to say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regulations don't allow them that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are pet foods that
[SPEAKER_00]: are made a hundred percent in a licensed human food facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by law, they are required to meet every single food safety requirement that human foods are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those foods are allowed to differentiate themselves by putting human grade on their label.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the only guarantee that pet owners have
[SPEAKER_00]: to ingredient and manufacturing safety students.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all we got.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, there are some foods out there that are made in a pet food facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they use 100% human-grade ingredients, human-grade supplements.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: the same as what's in human food, but because they're made in a pet food facility, they cannot make that human grade statement on their label.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to ask them, ask them in writing if all ingredients, including supplements are human grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: The opposite of human grade is feed grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feed was designed to feed livestock animals who are going to slaughter, who don't have a long life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is designed to be, you know, sold in 50 pound bags and stored in a barn, not brought in your home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feed is a completely different thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no guarantee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feed can also be this horrendous waste.
[SPEAKER_00]: The actual definition, Afko has a definition of feed grade, which says that ingredients are suitable for animals to consume and abide by law unless they don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's me paraphrasing, but that's what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the legal definition of feed grade is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you want ingredients, you want the manufacturers assurance that ingredients are human grade, not feed grade.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the only way to really know that, because it doesn't say on the back, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You'd have to email them, call them, say, hey,
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's your food made and is it food great?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what you're saying that that's what people would have to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'll be deceptive in their responses sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some companies will go, oh, you know, they don't answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, all ingredients are human grade or all ingredients are feed grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will respond by saying, oh, all of our angry, all of our meats are source from USDA facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, guess what, condemn material comes from USDA facilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many of them are very deceptive in that answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they don't answer your question directly, move on to another pathway.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's plenty of pet foods out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you're looking for that, that distinguishing factor, you want to be looking for is your,
[SPEAKER_02]: protein or your food made in a human grade facilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that kind of the keywords that the trigger words that you're looking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if the pet food is made in a human food facility, it will likely have human grade on the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those products with human grade on the label, the requirement of stating human grade on the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pay no attention to any claims made on a website.
[SPEAKER_00]: Petford manufacturers are not how to countable for those claims by regulatory, unfortunately, so they can mislead pet owners only pay attention to the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it says human grade on the label, then that pet food uses 100% human grade ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: All ingredients are stored warehouse
[SPEAKER_00]: perfume and food safety standards and the manufacturing facility is a licensed human facility.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's good to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it means all of those requirements.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you know, because I think the hard thing for dog owners is the manipulation that they get, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the pet industry in general is, you know, obviously massive billions and billions and billions of
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we see it in training too.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of, you know, what I call marketing manipulation going on or people are kind of confused by terminology and marketing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the same thing with pet foods where you get like the steak in the salmon and the beautiful looking fish.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the salmon cutlet on the front of the bag with the reality is is it's not really any of that like you said it could be the bones or the skin or the eyeballs of that animal it's not like you're getting that stuff caught up and now we're seeing kind of this revolution of pet food companies coming up with.
[SPEAKER_02]: different fat food companies popping up, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's the kind of like the fresh kind of style prepared food where it's cooked food and I don't know if that's human greater or not with you can see the vegetables of course there's the door to door raw food companies like we feed raw on some others that are just you know delivering now and so things are changing for the better and I think with humans too
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's like the beauty of podcasting is kind of can look under the hood from these experts who's like you who spend their time really peel and back the layers of that onion to go wait a minute and and now or are talking about just so you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: These things aren't what they seem.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so now we're, and in my opinion, it's good for people to, you know, the more podcast I listen to of people saying, you know, like, if you buy vitamins and Amazon, there's it, you know, whatever percent chance that they're not real or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like the more you know, you really start to dig deep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's important for us to to your point like your dog passed away from something that was in a pet food company.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, how can how can people.
[SPEAKER_02]: In your opinion, because I know you do so much research on pet food products every year, and we could talk about your list at any time, but I know you do extensive, extensive amount of research, but what kind of passes your curriculum of like, this is good, this is safe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you wanna talk about the list that you created year for pet food companies, for pet owners to look at, to go, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: If this expert agrees with it, then it's probably okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: form for my pets and that's how I have to look at it is what I would give my own pets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't not give them a pet food that contains feed grade food ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it the meat has to be human grade all the vegetables fruits has to be human grade has to be that standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's also the, the, the cost for people myself included that has to be considered when you source, human gradients versus feed grading gradients.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just guess the price difference of USDA,
[SPEAKER_00]: disease non-slaught or animals, okay, major, major price difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cost of these pet foods or more, some companies opt to use feed grade supplements to help lower their cost for their customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as long as they do proper testing on those supplements, I don't have an issue with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if they ask those questions, ask if food ingredients are human grade or feed grade, ask if supplements are human grade or feed grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: If supplements are feed grade, ask them what testing they do, to assure that the supplements are safe at proper levels so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask them what testing they do.
[SPEAKER_00]: can kill your pet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've got to have, I think it's really good for pet owners to have a relationship in essence with their manufacturer, with multiple manufacturers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to get to know this company because you're trusting your pets life with their products.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the more you get to know about what they do on a regular basis, there are companies
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% organic ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are pet breed manufacturers that have gone to the expense and significant effort to have their manufacturing facility certified organic.
[SPEAKER_00]: They source 100% certified humanely raised animals.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the animal is certified humanely raised, that also means that the meat in your pet food, that animal, that livestock animal, ate what mother nature intended to eat, not these nasty rendered ingredients in a pelleted food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so grass, pasture raised beef, pasture raised poultry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing what some pet food manufacturers do.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a pet food company that like BPA, their BPA is chemical that can be in plastic that can alter, I think it's your endocrine system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I always ask companies, you know, does your packaging contain BPA?
[SPEAKER_00]: And one company went so far as to, you know, their packaging suppliers said, nope, no BPA, well, they tested it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they, they verify many companies do, they will verify their own suppliers, their suppliers say,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's this percentage of protein or this percentage of fat in the meat we're shipping you and and they double check and and that's an awesome thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So talk to the manufacturer and ask them questions like this of what do you do to assure that this product that I'm buying from you is safe for my dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because the reading it every day and I think that that's that's super important I think like I said now that we're getting more and more into the health and wellness of our pets as well as humans.
[SPEAKER_02]: those questions are readily available for a lot of companies that kind of put it on the forefront of what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's probably forcing, well, I think it's forcing a lot of companies to kind of level up their policies and and and to your point, I just wanted to mention, like anytime I post about, you know, we have a single ingredient organic beef liver treats,
[SPEAKER_02]: I say, well, the liver processes all the toxins in the animal.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I want to make sure unknown.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to make sure that the beef liver that I'm using is at least organic because as that animal is breaking down that grain or whatever they're eating grass,
[SPEAKER_02]: and they're in their liver's processing that, you know, the beef liver that I didn't give my dog, I don't want it to be this filtration system, filled with, you know, bad stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my point is is they're more expensive than the leading beef liver that you'd find in any store.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so to your point, things that I try to, or even when I post about the raw food company that I use,
[SPEAKER_02]: people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can't afford that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I get that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I understand that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can go out and you can, I just did a podcast with the authors of a dog's table, which is like the first, not the very first, but it's the first cookbook for dogs of its kind, in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really well done.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things they were saying is,
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to do raw.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to, you know, pretty much anything that you're feeding yourself, you could give your dog the blueberries, the broccoli, the tomatoes, the chickens, all that stuff, you know, kind of just cleaning, ingredient, single ingredient stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think one thing that people have a hard time with is understanding, that the things that we put in our bodies are going to fluctuate in price,
[SPEAKER_02]: considerably, predicated off of the quality of that product, if you will.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so to your point, if we have an animal that was raised in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, a certified humane facility, and that was fed, you know, pasture raised in, you know, they'll come, I can't remember the brand who makes that commercial of like happy cows, happy cheese or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember what it is, but I think it's happy chickens, happy eggs, yeah, same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I know what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get, you get these companies that go out of their, it costs them their overhead and their regulations to abide by those rules to be certified organic or certified, whatever is then goes up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then of course, the product
[SPEAKER_02]: don't realize is when you and I get it like I'm not trying to say like well make more money or you know maybe your kids shouldn't eat your dogs eat better I'm not saying that but I am saying people do have a really hard time understanding that the reason why like my organic beef liver treats or anybody else is that takes the because I have to spend much more money
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, here's a bunch of beef liver and we don't know where they were.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could have came from Bangladesh.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's that's something that you hit on that I really wanted to highlight for the for the people who are listening that understand you get, I mean, unfortunately with with with with food, you get what you pay for.
[SPEAKER_02]: If somebody is selling you something that's a dollar and somebody else is selling it for five.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's probably more than likely a reason why that is, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because as any, you know, when we order like equipment, you know, collars or leashes or treat pouches or whatever, we try to source it at a price that we can then resell at a decent price.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes we can't, right, because we just need
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that certain thing for the packaging or whatever, and so that's something I see all the time is a lot of people will say that, you know, not so much process or not ultra process food is better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand for the reasons we've already discussed, but we can't afford it or we can't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any advice for dog owners who maybe can't afford a direct to your door, raw food, or direct to your door cooked on processed food?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there things that you've found in systems or even resources that people can say, you know what, I'm just gonna go down to all these or your local store and buy this or that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a system that you have in place for people who want to feed that don't want to feed?
[SPEAKER_02]: and want to feed a healthier food for their dog or diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important that we and we being pet owners support the companies that are doing it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you can't afford to feed a human grade pet food source from 100% certified
[SPEAKER_00]: you could buy that once a month, maybe, you know, once every two months and feed some.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen in the grocery, I started buying organic as much as I could, organic produce in the grocery 10 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And 10 years ago, the price of organic was double of what traditional farming.
[SPEAKER_00]: was.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now many times you can see in the grocery that that organic is just a few pennies more than traditional.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the more of those industries are supported, the easier it is for them to get their cost down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas that becomes the type of industry that we support,
[SPEAKER_00]: it becomes more affordable for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important to support these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also important to support your local pet stores.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go to local independent pet stores and buy your food from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't pick their brains, stand in there and talk to them for an hour and learn from them and then go thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and go home in order it online.
[SPEAKER_00]: Support businesses in your community.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really important to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have another point for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and making it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not that hard to make pet food yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to follow a good recipe.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you first start doing it, the very first time I cooked pet food for my own pets.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing this in partnership with a veterinarian friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's going, I said, okay, I'll try to add on my pets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I cooked it and put the plates down in the ate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like thrilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then I'm watching them thinking they're going to drop over at any minute because of something I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: But knock on wood, my cooking has not killed anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, big pat food can't say the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're cooking hats.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's the most economical way for people to do it is to prepare it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you make a few batches, you get braver and more confident in what you're doing, we cook a huge batch and then freeze it, put it in low containers and freeze it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we know exactly what's in there because we were the ones putting every ingredient in the food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes a little time, but it can be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we can make at least a week's worth of food.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have two dogs and five cats.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a bona fide crazy person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can make enough food for 10 days to two weeks in about two or three hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It saves you a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's better.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing is it's so much better for your dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a there's a local farm maybe 20 minutes from us and they do their whole farm is organic and they do lifestock so dox chickens cattle
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think that's it, but maybe pigs, but I'm not sure, but anyway, they, you know, they, they, they butcher their animals, they do a bunch of stuff, they have a whole room full of freezers for dog stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's incredible to see how cheap it is to go in there because they're going to, you know, they're, they're saying they're slaughtering these animals and they're like, well, we can't really sell this, we can't really sell that or nobody will eat it or whatever it is and they're then packaging it and freezing it and giving it not giving it away, but selling it to the local communities and.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's just I just think that it's it's very overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find the more dog owners that I talk to or you know reading my comments when I post something about a dog food recipe or you know whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people feel overwhelmed because there are super feeders out there that almost have a degree or a Ph.D. in feeding their animals a certain way.
[SPEAKER_02]: launched.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some of the stuff in there, I was like, I don't even know if I can make that for myself, it's so like, you know, it's it's like, lasagna with all these different things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway,
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, there's the raw feeders that will do like penguin toes and quail eggs and good, you know, and you're like, what I don't have time for that, but I think it's simpler than that right so it's it's just going out and asking your local butcher a lot of I know around where I'm where I live there's like there's a local shop called Benson's that
[SPEAKER_02]: sells, you know, everything, the whole nine, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the, the kibbles and the toys, but also they have refrigeration, freezers in the middle, and they have everything from cooked prepared food for dogs to raw food to your kifier and your goat milk, and your chicken legs and every feet and the,
[SPEAKER_02]: all the stuff that you can you can put on there so there's so many different ways now it's becoming more prevalent but I think the difference between the process food that we're talking about and the rendered meat and then going out and boiling a cheap chicken breasts and some sweet potatoes and some broccoli and supporting some chicken broth over and seeing if you're
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say it's a hundred times better than feeding your dog ultra-process food that's coming from these establishments and these facilities that are really obviously in it for money and obviously in it to make the food as cheap as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: to then, you know, and that's where they put so much money into branding and packaging.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get that, like, my cat you see frisky's and on the front of it was like, you know, fish floating in the air and I'm like, oh, cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: My cat's eating, you know, rainbow trout, her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did, you know, it's just like with kids, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you look at, you know, I have a one year old in the three year old and you look at the marketing for kids food.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's bright and colorful and, you know, and it's gummy bears and all that stuff that every now and then is okay, be a kid, but at the same time, like they're constantly trying to market to look how good this is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if if a company is spending more money and marketing on how good.
[SPEAKER_02]: The product should be and not necessarily putting the money into the actual processing of the product To me those are like red those are red flags So what do you just give me an example of what you feed your animals on any given day like do you do you Do you cook your food?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you switch proteins?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you add fish oils like what do you do as An expert in in this stuff and knowing what's good and what's not
[SPEAKER_00]: I feed commercial raw, I feed home prepared cooked and I come by them, I don't feed them in separate meals, I do vary the proteins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I'll get a commercial cooked as well to a switch between different brands.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty steadfast on a few brands, but just because they're easy for me to get to a bite from independent pet food stores, just like everybody else does.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with the home prepared.
[SPEAKER_00]: We, we get, we go to Costco and it's quite amazing what you can get at Costco.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grass-fed beef from Costco is very affordable to be able to make your own pet food.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get and then we'll get
[SPEAKER_00]: by the liver, grass-fed liver, I'm a real big on making sure that a liver and greedy, a beef liver and greedy in this grass-fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Convime at the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_02]: Convime.
[SPEAKER_02]: Convime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Copper levels, Dr. Lori Codger independently herself tested some various different
[SPEAKER_00]: significantly higher in copper content in those animals versus grass fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what Mother Nature intended them to eat, you know, so that was important.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, you and you can start little.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to jump into this all at one time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can home
[SPEAKER_00]: something that you're going to use as a topper and still use say 70% of your commercial food and 30% your homemade topper, you know, you should be fine with that and then once you get your confidence up then you might want to make a complete diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: for your pet, just follow a good recipe to make sure that it is consisting of all the required nutrients at the required levels.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you're cooking this food, are you just, are you baking it, boiling it, putting it in a skillet?
[SPEAKER_02]: So if somebody, think about this, when somebody's listening to this, they go, you know what, I've been feeding that bag of food that we're talking about, and I don't want the rat poison, and I don't want the, the dead cats and dogs and my dogs food.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to make mine for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go to Costco or all these are a place that sells, sells meat, and I'm going to get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do they do?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what would you suggest?
[SPEAKER_00]: It depends on the recipe of what you would need to do, but we used by whole raw chickens, roast them, pull all the meat off.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was quite labor intensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm a little bit lazier and we buy ground already ground like hamburger turkey and then hamburger, actual hamburger.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's already ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes preparation a lot easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I prepare it like, it's a big stew.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a great, big, huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at one point it was a lobster pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I prepare everything in this pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Start with the meat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cook it all up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have extra liquid in there, especially for my cats.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like for their food to be high in moisture.
[SPEAKER_00]: for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's it's not bad dump the vegetables in there, dump the liver in there, cut it up in advance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I will take all of that out and run it to a food processor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's mainly because of the calf.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the dog's eat it that way too, but it's mainly for the calf to make sure it's it's finally ground for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: What vegetables do you like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a little bit of everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have broccoli is is a big one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Broccoli, cauliflower, squash, peas, field peas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll put beans in there sometime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I've used like a mixed vegetable.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm in a hurry,
[SPEAKER_00]: And need it a quick batch, it's a mixed vegetable and it has corn in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mind corn.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's human grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that corn that's used in bad food.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and it's organic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also buy a bag of mixed vegetables at Costco that are organic for a very reasonable price.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So start off slow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn as you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to put your foot in water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't jump in the deep end of the pool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just put your foot in the water and then slowly work your way into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is well worth the effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your pat is going to be thrilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: when cats are harder to change, then dogs are found.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find it's so sad that when I get if you cook to piece of chicken, roast it a piece of chicken, and you just pull the piece of meat off, there's many cats that are so conditioned to only eat in kibble, that you can put a piece of meat in front of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're natural food and they won't even eat it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's unfortunate, but it's good, especially for cats to vary everything because cats can get stuck on one particular food a lot easier than dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I had that experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for those of you who heard this story, sorry, but I'm gonna tell it again.
[SPEAKER_02]: My cat pit, my cat pit, he's about 16.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I rescued him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to be a dog walker slash pet sitter.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how I kind of started my dog career when I was like 21.
[SPEAKER_02]: And excuse me, and the dogs I was watching were aggressive and they killed his.
[SPEAKER_02]: everything around.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was just sitting on the front porch and the dog I was watching was just sitting there looking to shop.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I took him home and the rest of history.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he thinks he's a dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's actually my OG part of my pack.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's the only one left part of my like original pack when I was in my 20s, which is pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's old, but he was addicted to first skis.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I remember when I switched them to, there's this company locally to me called Roganix.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a company that raises all their own animals specifically for dog food, and which is cool because a lot of companies don't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of take what we've been talking about, crunch them up and whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: they make this little cat nugget, little chicken cat nugget, and it's balanced.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it has organ, you know, the meat and the organs and the bones and some supplements and some veggies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they make them into little balls, little frozen balls, perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I give him chicken, the chicken cat nuggets.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he turns his nose up to this for about a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and I'm thinking like, man,
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got to eat like because I'm thinking in my head at some point it's going to be so hungry he's going to be like Oscar.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to eat this cat nugget.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, week goes by and he doesn't eat and he's meowing at me, meowing at me, you know, going towards the cabinet in which I used to have, I used to live in this 800 square foot apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going towards this cabinet, meowing and saying, hey, dude, feed me and I would put down this raw raw, raw little meatball and I pick it up if you didn't eat it, put it back in the fridge, whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we finally ate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And ever since then, this cat has been a savage, like absolutely savage.
[SPEAKER_02]: He will, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was telling, I was explaining this on another podcast I had to Dr. Eva Frick.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's a chio-practor veterinarian.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's been working with dogs since I was born as a vet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: It was telling her about this story, about he'll get up and steal things off the counter.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if my kids are eating, I have to put the bowl of whatever they're eating, if they have to go to the potty or something, I have to take away their food, put it in the microwave so it doesn't walk off with it because he will, he'll take a slice of pizza and run away with it and then the dogs are chasing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, so I turned them into this carnivorous.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if it was, I can't believe what I was missing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel more fulfilled, but she came over to my house, Dr. Abraham Frick, and adjusted my dog, actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: And during that process, she, she said, get some treats out, so I got my treats out and I had the bag on the counter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had just done a podcast with her and I told her this story.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm sitting there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my mother and I go, is that pit, she goes running off and of course, my cat is dragging my, my, you know, that my here's my foot, my, you know, big bag of treats right here, dragging it off the counter and trying to rip it up to try to get a couple of beef liver treats.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just kind of full circle.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I told you, this is what I deal with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so yeah, I understand that with cats being very, very picky in that manner, but of course, then he'll go out.
[SPEAKER_02]: catch a chipmunk and eat it alive and I'm like, okay, whatever, cats are a different, a whole different thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, do you do any supplements or do you add any toppers, kefir, or any type of probiotics, or anything, like fish oils or anything on that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't do per se supplements, but I will supplement their food with sardines sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, add extra broccoli for the dogs, green beans just add some raw vegetables on top of it, depending on what we're having for dinner ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I share what we're eating.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I don't really, we have no real need for supplements not on what.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cool, and during the process of
[SPEAKER_02]: really doing your research on what pet food companies are doing or not doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you able to disclose what pet companies are doing right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because when you're talking about the pet food companies that are doing the human grade facilities and stuff, I just want to look up like what companies they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any brands that you know that are doing the right things for for cable?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but oh, for Kibble, there is no human grade Kibble.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: I miss, but I, I miss heard all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then because when you were talking about the human grade facilities with the chicken and and all that stuff, I was thinking that there were a cable companies doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I was, yeah, that's why I was a younger jump.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think honest, honest kitchen has, and I think it's an air drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not an extruded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I believe there's is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, kibble shaped, let's say, human grade, but as far as, you know, your typical kibble sold in great big bags, you know, I can't think of honest kitchen maybe, but I can't think of any other brand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've read I'm aware of.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've reached out to all the, have you reached?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me ask you, then, have you reached out to a lot of the big players and have asked them what are you doing, how are you doing it?
[SPEAKER_02]: And they've all basically said, yeah, we're doing it the way that you probably don't want to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they, they don't put it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They put it very politically correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I, and then I pull,
[SPEAKER_00]: Freedom of Information Act requires like Mars pet care.
[SPEAKER_00]: As example, I have a Freedom of Information and a request that I got from FDA on an inspection of their facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had a recall one year and this was a follow-up inspection by FDA, I believe, two years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: they included in the FOIA, a past sighting log that was the companies where employees write how many bugs they see in the facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were millions of roaches noted by the
[SPEAKER_00]: The FDA noted that this bug infestation was in the food production area.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no recall.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no warning letter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just, yeah, we saw a lot of bugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll need to clean this up, but that was it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, you, you just,
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn as you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to remember other foias I filed, but.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you escaping me right now, but that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you so because Mars is when the lot penalty people realize that Mars the company owns quite a bit of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: That a lot of that clinics like your local that clinics that have a couple around town Mars probably owns laboratories.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they don't know.
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, during this, during this, how long have you been doing your yearly kind of Susan fixed in approval, pet food and treats and stuff like how long have you been doing that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I know that's that's originally how I heard about you is I remember when I was doing my my beef liver treats.
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody had said, you got to try to get him on Susan Thickson's yearly like approved thing and I didn't I wasn't familiar with it and then I looked into I was like, oh, this is kind of cool kind of how like Oprah does her you know Oprah's 20 best things and it kind of you know everyone goes crazy over like how long have you been doing that and can you talk about what your process is for that because I know it's it's highly regarded in the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the list and each year December 1st, I put out a food list and I'll have to contact you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do put out a treat list like in June.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll contact you for that treat list consideration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, manufacturers are sent a very long list of questions that you sent that
[SPEAKER_00]: that I send them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And based on their responses, like if they claim ingredients are human grade, ingredients are meets are source from certified humanly raised organic, whatever their claims are, then next they have to send me verification of those claims.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: You're climbing their human grade cut out there for a minute hold on one second, and they have to send me verification documents for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a human grade ingredients organic and certified humanly raised are all they are fed by me and I look through hundreds of documents sometimes for each manufacturer, it can be a lot, but I go through.
[SPEAKER_00]: and read every single document that they send me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I have a page.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure page.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of kind of erupt you for a second.
[SPEAKER_02]: You cut out you you cut out for I don't know why I think it was my internet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I apologize, but you cut out for about 30 seconds there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you start from the top?
[SPEAKER_02]: I apologize, can you start from the top?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sorry about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't that's never happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what just happened, but.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought we were frozen on there, but I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, yeah, I'm sorry about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's never happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you start from the top?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you send out a list to all the pet food companies, a very in-depth list of all the things, and then that's where we left off.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a long list of questions that are sending them in with their responses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes there's follow-up questions,
[SPEAKER_00]: The companies have to prove to me that their answers are accurate, such as human grading ingredients, organic, and certified humanly race.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to provide me verification documents and like human grade or organic, it's it applies for every single ingredient in their products.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they might have many different products with a multitude of ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: our require verification for every single ingredient.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's about a three month process that for me to go through all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I build the web page as each manufacturer has their own page where then I give this information where the foods are available.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're complete and balanced or supplemental, if they're complete and balanced for adult animals or life stages, it's a full load of information.
[SPEAKER_00]: All put on one page this year, I think there were 42 different brands a started with more than 100 companies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they get cut down sometimes in manufacturer won't respond.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, and I don't know if the email got lost, if they don't want to be considered, or what the situation is, but many times companies don't respond.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll try I'll repeat that try.
[SPEAKER_00]: I take very meticulous notes each year and I keep that document and I'll try for like three years again, if a company doesn't respond and they look good on paper, then I'll try again, but after three times of not responding to me, then they're gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to keep chasing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's great that you do that and how many people does that go out to like a newsletter or social media post or how many people.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it goes to you mean what I'm trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: The list of factors.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, the list like the list when you do send it out to how many people get that list.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that is how I support myself in this work is the list.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the food list is available for $12.
[SPEAKER_00]: People can pay more those that want to support my work.
[SPEAKER_00]: More can pay more for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's the same document no matter what you pay for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's $12.
[SPEAKER_00]: The treat list is $5.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you do this process, what are things that you're you're looking for like for a true for an example for treats because that's kind of an uncharted territory like what are because for me when I went out to do my treats.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always liked cubed beef liver for training a dog and to me the difference between like treats of like I love you here's something yummy and actual like professional training treats is the treats for me have to have utility.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want them I want to be able to actually use them in a way that's going to help me you know for an example like when I hold my I think
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll show you, sometimes I have dummy bags that are filled with socks.
[SPEAKER_02]: This one has treats in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for an example, just for photos.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for an example, like this is a beef liver cube treat.
[SPEAKER_02]: So people just listen in, it's literally like a perfect little square, like a 3D square.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I like about these is you're able to, like if I'm luring a dog,
[SPEAKER_02]: The dog comes up to the food.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can hold the food in between my fingers and then the dog kind of flea bites.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're way around the food so I can work on it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can work on a sit.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can work on direction, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's my speaking of Dr. Eva Frick, who came over to my in-laws house to adjust their husky, which was very gracious of her time and energy and her expertise.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things that just mortified me was,
[SPEAKER_02]: She goes go grab some treats because she goes grab some treats and
[SPEAKER_02]: they go over to a little ceramic dish and they pick it up and they get these little milk bones.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this is embarrassing, I was like, this is embarrassing.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, why I go milk guys, milk bones like, come on, you know, and they don't know, they should know, I mean, obviously they don't listen to my podcast, but so then it's so funny because I'm sitting there like shaking my head and I'm like, that's all you got.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they bring, because she's trying to adjust the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she wants the dog to, you know, stay engaged into her hand or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they bring her over the milk bun.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was like, oh my god, this isn't embarrassing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give me some cheese.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for an example, like milk bones, you know, they're crunchy, alter processed, died.
[SPEAKER_02]: But furthermore, yeah, probably the worst grade possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, I always tell people, like if you can get it at the gas station, probably not good for your dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you can get it checking out a Home Depot, probably not great for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been sitting on
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was just funny, that story.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I like about like a treat, like because I think that there's a training treat and then there's almost like this reward treat, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where you give it to a dog because they like it because their cute or they went potty or
[SPEAKER_02]: whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my treats like other beef liver treats have utility where you can actually train with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's you can lure with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can reward them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also what I really like about beef liver treats is the dog can work the treat without being overfed.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of people like, um, what's the zoos?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think is the the name of the treats.
[SPEAKER_02]: ZU KES, I believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: The great treats,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good that they're small, but at the same time, you can't really lure with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have to pez the fence then the dog does it you feed, the dog does it you feed.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I really like about not just my beef liver treats, but because I've used other beef liver treats in the past is you can bring the dog the piece of food and they can nibble it and then you can remove it and they're just as happy as if they got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can use one like that cube that I just had out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can use for
[SPEAKER_02]: 10 minutes on a whole training session and then give them the jackpot after, which is nice, especially I work with a lot of reactive dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really nice to kind of food lure a dog through situations as well as they're kind of chasing and champion, but if you give a dog like a piece of treat and then they eat it and then they swallow it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The games kind of over.
[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of caught the they caught it already right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of they got the cookie where I really like kind of frustrating the dog and they keep they keep pushing and motivating to you're going to so when you so when you do your treat analysis like what are you looking for you looking for the same things you look for food for processing and ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's quality of ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to be human grade ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the individualized treat, it can be a biscuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be, you know, freeze dried meat treat, you know, it can be whatever that's left up to the manufacturer and the consumer as to what they're looking for, what they need the treat, what's the purpose of the treat.
[SPEAKER_00]: My purpose of treats that are included in the list, it's quality of ingredients.
[SPEAKER_02]: And are you looking for, because I know that there's a lot of pet food companies out there that put an extraordinarily amount of sugars in their food, are you looking for, like, if somebody had a treat that had organic,
[SPEAKER_02]: organic sugar, and that's good quality sugar.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you still taking the consideration?
[SPEAKER_02]: This little tiny piece of treat is also got three grams of sugar in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you looking at the actual ingredients as well?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you just looking at the quality of the ingredients?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you'll find that if a company goes to the effort and this isn't 100% across the board,
[SPEAKER_00]: certified humanely raised meats, human-grade ingredients, when they can be using garbage feed-grade ingredients, they're for the most part, dotting all the ads and crossing all the teas for the rest of it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they wouldn't dump a bunch of sugar into it because they care.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the quality of ingredient is indicative of them carrying about the animal that's going to come see.
[SPEAKER_00]: But directly answering your question, I'm not a veterinarian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I cannot make that
[SPEAKER_00]: like a veterinarian could that's outside of my expertise so I don't cross that line.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do look at just quality of ingredients.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, no, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to spend other time in efforts into a good quality human grade food, you're probably not going to dump sugar on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you finding I also have been doing research on
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of pet food companies sourcing their products from different countries during I mean you're the perfect person to ask as you've done some research on this year kind of like journal like a journalism piece here is like Have you have you found that have you found a lot of people are also importing stuff from China and other places Or then of course the origin of the the product is then even harder to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as example, touring, the supplement touring, touring is not available in the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot get a touring supplement that's manufactured in the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: China, Japan, the heart quality one to my knowledge is sourced from Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're also dealing with seasonal growth of vegetables and fruits.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have in our groceries fruits available all year round, but seasonally they're grown in different countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same thing applies to pet foods too.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have no option if they're making pet food all year round, then they do have to source ingredients
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they're seasonally not available here are they're not fresh and they want fresh Yeah, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: That makes a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because a lot of times if I go to get bananas right now It's gonna they're gonna be from Ecuador or if I go to get a avocado It's gonna be from Mexico or sometimes California.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah
[SPEAKER_02]: So during your experience, what has been the most shocking thing that you have other than unfortunately your dog passing away from things that were put on the food that you gave your dog, what has been like the most shocking thing that you've discovered in your research with working and kind of this underground system of figuring out how pet food companies operate.
[SPEAKER_00]: rendered ingredients is a big shocker, one of the most hard-breaking to me is the regulatory people just simply don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: At an Afko meeting, this was in 2015, Afko is, you see the word
[SPEAKER_00]: rights, the state laws that are adopted by the states, they've established the nutritional profile, they're heavily involved in what pet food is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was at an Afga meeting, and the discussion was expired grocery foods.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when a grocery foods expire, they're not thrown
[SPEAKER_00]: out back behind that publics or croggers or Walmart that a rendering facility comes and picks up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the example given was yogurt like a six pack of little yogurt cups individual servings.
[SPEAKER_00]: That six pack of yogurt goes into that grind and it's fed to livestock animals in a palleted
[SPEAKER_00]: And a veterinarian went to the microphone after they were talking about the yogurt and she went wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's plastic going into cattle feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want my daughter to be drinking milk with elements of plastic in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the entire room,
[SPEAKER_00]: and industry, boot her loudly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone, boot her like how dare you, a veterinarian, concerned about her child, they boot her.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was in us horrifying moment, ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: with regulatory just horrifying the regulatory people probably the the majority of the booths work from industry because they want their cheap ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: But regulatory should have went, hey, you know, you can't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't you can't respond to a question like that
[SPEAKER_00]: That's heartbreaking to me for the FDA and these state authorities to knowingly, allowing illegal ingredients to go into pet food with no disclosure to consumers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is mind-boggling when you want to challenge the FDA on something that they're doing or not doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I filed several with FDA, have gotten no changes out of FDA from them, but I filed one in June of 2022 that I have the most high hopes for because I quoted law, those misleading ingredient names, chicken, pet food chicken and human food chicken, federal law says that food
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, an ingredient name that is confusingly similar to a food of, you know, with the same name that is nutritionally inferior, specifically addresses what our problems in petrary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quoted all those laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked really hard on it submitted it in June of 2022.
[SPEAKER_00]: The FDA is required by law to respond to your citizen petition within 180 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been waiting three and a half years and we still don't have a response.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and that's because the confusion of telling pet owners, people listening and watching this podcast, telling them that the bag of food that they're buying is chicken and not distinguishing the difference between human-grade chicken and pet feed chicken.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because that's that marketing manipulation, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: that like from I mean, that's what I would do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if I were to look at a bag and it has all the colorful things on the front, like, okay, that looks nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I flip it over and it's the first ingredient because that's like one of the first things that you learn when you're reading food is like the first ingredient, it means that it's got to have more than like what 50% of the the the context of majority ingredient right is the first ingredient in order a pre cooking way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, heavy estalitis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, but I just recently found out that glad you mentioned that the heaviest weight.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what what they do is this dirty thing that they will weigh the chicken product for an example, wet, and then when they actually cook it, however they cook it, and then
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, that's what they're actually getting is this dry formulated weight, and so when they weigh it, they go, oh yeah, you're getting your pain and you're getting for this much chicken and that's what they put in the bag that's legal for them to do, but an actuality when the dog, of course, is the end product gets it that decreases significantly because they've cooked it all down to this dry powdered thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're allowed to estimate the weight based on, like if it's chicken meal, on a reconstitute it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are allowed to add moisture back into that and reconstitute the dry meal into a wet form and then base the weight on it, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And call it chicken?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, if it's a meal, they have to call it chicken meal, but they also now allow a dehydrated chicken, which can be labeled as chicken, even though basically it's the same thing as a chicken meal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dehydrated form.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very misleading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very misleading.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that's why I kind of have this podcast is I just want to educate dog owners because every day they're getting their dogs are getting assaulted by these things and we don't realize that because we go out and we look at the bag and it's got this beautiful artwork or whatever and that's like more than 80% of I would say, you know, more than 80% if not more people are feeding cable.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is your.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't, I don't have any words for the mother who got booed for question, yeah, because that's got to be the same and I don't know, but wouldn't that be the same thing as eating like if it was like beef cattle.
[SPEAKER_02]: and they were getting like the milk is one thing from a dairy cow, but if they're actually feeding this plastic substance to our beef cattle because it's cheaper because it's so basically what's happening is is
[SPEAKER_02]: The stores will say, hey, who want what what pet food company wants to sign up for our rendered pet food program.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we're going to do is all this spot expired and out of date products that are in our grocery store.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to put in a bin so you can take and we're going to sell it to you for a very low cost because we're just going to throw it away anyways.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're kind of trying
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's gone bad, which means we can't sell it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to sell it to the pet food companies for 10 cents just to recoup something instead of throwing it away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the rendered company comes out, picks it up, takes everything that's in plastic and cellophane and rubber and whatever else is in there and they grind it up and they put it into the pet food, or to the feed to the animals to livestock.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it does it does it go to meet animals too?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like chickens, pork and bacon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, mostly that the expired grocery food is mostly a component of livestock feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen I'm trying to think of the name of the brand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen
[SPEAKER_00]: Bakery goods.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an ingredient from expired Bakery goods in one dog food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only one one dog food I've seen it in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's still there, but mostly that is livestock.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a concern too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, like at these meetings, there are a group of us that attend have for years that are questioning all of this for pet foods.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no no one.
[SPEAKER_00]: that are challenging these regulatory authorities that are making up the laws and defining these ingredients for livestock feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very unfortunate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we the best we can with livestock feed, but it's a challenging thing because they allow, again, that hard-breaking thing
[SPEAKER_00]: that they allow industry, they will literally, I've seen them happen many times at these meetings, they allow industry to define their own ingredient.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they might tweak it a little change award, but industry goes, oh, absolutely, this is safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that industry run the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think furthermore,
[SPEAKER_02]: We ultimately are kids and we, as humans, could be eating that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's what, that was my point is if the life, it wasn't so much about the dog stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was more like if the livestock that my neighbors and what, you know, my nieces and nephews are eating, the cows and the pigs and the chickens that are eating this byproduct.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going into their their their system as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, if the, if the thing that we're eating is eating plastic,
[SPEAKER_02]: At some point in time, I would have, I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but at some point in time, I would have assumed that that's going to end up in our systems.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we're eating, we are eating the meat that they eat, or sorry, we're eating the meat, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why, you know, any time I can get any, any type of wild game, like if any of my buddies go hunting or anything, I'm always like, I'll take whatever wild game I could get, I wish I had time to hunt, but unfortunately it's it's kind of a full time thing sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, what do you think about this new, like, I think dog owners are now getting inundated with the commercials and we don't have to mention any names if you don't want to, but a lot of the...
[SPEAKER_02]: the door to door type of of now products that are delivering right to your door that are cooked products or even raw products.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you done research on in your list?
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you done research on what companies are doing it right and maybe things that you have to watch out for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because anytime there's this big boom,
[SPEAKER_02]: which I think right now is a big boom, which is good, because the raw food companies and the pre-cooked companies that are sending this stuff door to door from what I've seen most of them are much better than the highly processed parking lot, Carcass Kibble.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how much research have you done in that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what do you think about this kind of new boom that's going on with?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because every commercial I see is now like a healthier dog food.
[SPEAKER_00]: It still depends.
[SPEAKER_00]: It depends on the brand you can't, even though their commercial might be great and emotionally touching.
[SPEAKER_00]: There, there, it still is marketing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're selling a product and you've still got to do your homework no matter you still got to do your homework and our ingredients.
[SPEAKER_00]: human grade are supplements human grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are your manufacturing standards?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they per human food safety standards?
[SPEAKER_00]: What testing do you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're still going to do your homework no matter what.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't trust the marketing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the marketing we are seeing has helped bring awareness to ultra-process pet foods where you can look at a bowl and see that there's a piece of meat and there's some vegetables.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see it versus a cable.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know what's in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a problem process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the awareness that these commercials are bringing
[SPEAKER_00]: is tremendous.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as the particular product, some of them that advertise are quality, and some of them are alluding that they are quality.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're actually using feed grading gradients.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you still got to do your homework.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that there's some companies,
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the, this company that I work with and one of the companies, one of the things that they do is they do, because they have to go through the USDA regulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that they do differently with their raw food is they do the HPP, which is the, it's a high pressure pasteurization.
[SPEAKER_02]: They use cold, like cold water to kill a lot of the pathogens and harmful things
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I know that they're arc and there's other companies that are doing other things like some of the and I don't know them because I don't feed them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just I'm familiar with beefy draw.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's why I said that, but some of the things like if you go into grocery stores now, there's like coolers of of you know what they call fresh food.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just interesting like, can you educate us a little bit more on when somebody somebody goes to the to the the store to get dog food and we flip over that bag.
[SPEAKER_02]: What what are things on that label?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know some of the things we talked about is is there like a logo or seal for human grade establishments it'll be the words human grade on the front of the package if it meets all the legal requirements those will be on the front of the package.
[SPEAKER_00]: there is no magic wand, you know, as much as we wish there was, it should be easier, it should be disclosed on a label if the chicken is actually chicken or if it's feed grade, pet-grade chicken.
[SPEAKER_00]: That should be disclosed, it should be, I mean, federal law requires it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just got to get FDA to get family give me a response to my citizen petition because once they do give me a response and they will probably tell me no, they've told me no on everything else, but the laws on our side and I will file a lawsuit against the FDA not a monetary lawsuit, it will be a lawsuit to force them.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make these changes because federal law states that consumers deserve this information.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have to wait for their response before any such law seat can be filed, which maybe is why they're dragging your heel so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there just is no magic wand.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want the magic wand, if you want the easy path, then you've got to look for those words human grade
[SPEAKER_00]: Pay attention to the website on the label, beyond that, you've got to send some communications to the pet food manufacturer and ask just a few questions, you know, and.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done this many times, have ALAS emails and I'll ask the same question different days, worded a little bit differently, but in essence, the same question to a manufacturer to see if I get the same response back and believe it or not, you can get a different response back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is not, you want to be consistent with your responses.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, pay the little bit of money to get your list every year, because you've already done all that research.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's done the research.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I would suggest.
[SPEAKER_02]: That'll be easier.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that way, if you go on to your website, you can just pay the money and then you can say, Hey, here's all the due diligence I've done and here are all the.
[SPEAKER_02]: pet food companies that kind of check out on the the ingredients because that's a safe way to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the deal with recalls?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I know a lot of a lot of cable companies have tremendous recalls and I'm sure raw food companies and and cooked.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what to call them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not raw food companies.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure that they deal with recalls too.
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like it's a common thing but
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there things that you've seen in the industry that surprises you with these recalls because I would assume the lack of due diligence and cleanliness behind like a cable company right where they're just scraping unknown rendered animals carcasses into a parking lot and then rendering it down and killing rats and fumigating them to me I would be if something gets recalled.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that just somebody like you who cares a lot that says, hey, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just tested your product and we found this and then they're like, oh, shoot.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to go recall everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do recalls work in the unfortunately most of them happen because pets die.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the unfortunate part.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like
[SPEAKER_00]: is excess vitamin D. There is absolutely no excuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hills pet food recalled, I mean, millions, millions of pounds of canned pet foods.
[SPEAKER_00]: for excess vitamin D, a good friend of mine, her dog, we weren't friends at the time when we are now, her dog died from that recall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their own protocols, Hills Petro'd safety protocols were that every batch of vitamin D we get in we tested.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make sure it's at the potency that it's supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: FDA inspection of the facility when a product is recalled, the FDA goes in and does what's called a trace forward and a trace backwards investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trace forward is to find out where all those pet foods went and to make sure that the manufacturer
[SPEAKER_00]: has exactly where they went so they can notify them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trace backwards is finding the problem and such as a vitamin D supplement, they trace it back to the supplier and then they do an investigation there to see if this same high-ponent C vitamin D went to other manufacturers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an investigation
[SPEAKER_00]: finding the problem at, in FDA's investigation after this after pets were dying, they found that Hills just didn't test incoming ingredients as their own company protocol in writing stated that they would do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, to me, that's an unforgivable.
[SPEAKER_00]: recall you have your own safety protocols in writing that your brand is supposed to follow and you don't follow them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's unforgettable and and pets died.
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes mistakes can happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, but no one everyone's human.
[SPEAKER_00]: So mistakes can happen, but something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: for me personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm I'm unforgiving with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be personally done with a brand that did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And is there a way for people to, because again, I know a lot of people still are going to feed cable listening to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a way for people to go and look at recalls?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know we have AI now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can probably just put it in the chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: GPT has this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a database on my website.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think back to 2012, all the recalls all the way back to 2012.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you send out notices for every, every recall, that's excellent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's an, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me about all this.
[SPEAKER_02]: This has been very eye-opening, very scary, but, you know, hopeful that the people who are listening to this are educated and I would just say,
[SPEAKER_02]: If people got this far into the podcast, understand that my objective, I'm sure you're objective as well, most of my guess objective, isn't to make people feel bad or scare the crap out of them, but it's simply
[SPEAKER_02]: to kind of shed light on things that are happening under your nose like almost well maybe not even almost I would just say criminal things are happening in the food industry not just humans but in pets too.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of harmful things and you're obviously, you know, you've kind of come from the ashes of that that your pet was killed Essentially by something that was on your pet food and now you're educating people and of course we don't want that to happen to anybody and so it's very important to me that dog owners.
[SPEAKER_02]: educate themselves and have a hell, you know, my job has always been to help dogs live a better life but now I'm able to do it at a different scale through this podcast and talking to different experts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything that you'd like to plug your website if you have a book, newsletters that people can follow you social media so they can they can stay up to date on you and all the research you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well the website is truth about petfood.com and there's a free newsletter you can subscribe and I also post everything on the truth about petfood Facebook page too.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, I'm going to put that in the show notes of people are running and driving and not able to write that down so you can click it when you get to a place you can truth about petfoods.com in the Facebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for coming on to the NoBed Dog's podcast and hopefully we have you again in the future and I appreciate your time and I appreciate the energy and I you know and I hope people tell you this often but you know obviously the work that
[SPEAKER_02]: is so important and so valuable and I'm grateful and I'm sure people listening to the podcast are grateful for all the hard work that you do because I know that it's probably not easy sitting there riding those emails and putting together these templates and creating different email addresses to send to different food companies.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of hard work and I think what you're doing is saving people's lives as dogs and also educating people by the masses.
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for doing what you do and thanks for coming on and thank you everybody for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're welcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, bye, everybody.