What do you feed your pet?

I was doing a check on petfood recalls, after seeing an article on "Recent recalls", which turned out to be "not so recent" by the way.......   Somewhere buried on the USDA Website, I found this little bit of information that scared the stuffing out of me........

NOT KIDDING!!!!
WARNING: If you are a "visual" person, and kindhearted, you  may want to skip this post. It is not a pretty picture! I just don't think it is common knowledge, and it shocked me into posting this, just in case you want to know/think you should know, but didn't. 

I have to admit, I didn't want to know, I'm not happy I know, because it's one of those things you can't "un see" and I wish I could forget, but for the sake of our fuzzy roommate..... I needed to know!  For those not wanting to read past this part, let's just say this: Perky is a  V E R Y   finnicky eater, but I think he's going to have to get used to homemade.....

Diversion requests will be handled on an ad hoc basis. The *Center* will consider the requests for diversion of food considered adulterated for human use in all situations where the diverted food will be acceptable for its intended animal food use. Such situations may include:

a. Pesticide contamination in excess of the permitted tolerance or action level.

b. Pesticide contamination where the pesticide involved is unapproved for use on a food or feed commodity.

c. Contamination by industrial chemicals.

d. Contamination by natural toxicants.

e. Contamination by filth.

f. Microbiological contamination.

g. Over tolerance or unpermitted drug residues.

Some general policy issues to be considered while evaluating proposals for diversion of food considered to be adulterated to animal feed use are:

a. A seizure action and a voluntary request for diversion are two separate processes. A seizure action and a request for diversion cannot legally be processed simultaneously. No diversion request submitted under this guideline will be considered once a seizure recommendation has been forwarded to headquarters. If a seizure recommendation is withdrawn and if the requirements of this policy are met, a diversion request may be entertained. Naturally, a diversion-based means of reconditioning seized articles may be an appropriate means of meeting the requirements of a court-ordered consent decree arising from a seizure.

b. Diversion may only be allowed where there is a legally enforceable assurance that the subject foods will not be placed into interstate commerce before the request is approved and the products appropriately diverted (i.e., meats not under USDA detention but nevertheless containing illegal residues would be appropriate for seizure or state embargo but not for diversion if the meats were already shipped in interstate commerce). Accordingly, this policy will primarily apply to embargoed goods or bonded goods to assure adequate control of the adulterated goods.

c. Where diversion is legally appropriate, data are required to demonstrate that the diverted use poses no safety hazards to the animals consuming the diverted food and to the public who may be exposed to edible tissues of such animals.

d. The diversion policy does not sanction or authorize the blending of the adulterated foods, i.e., the policy does not authorize the diluting of an adulterated product to below a tolerance or action level.

*Material between asterisks is new or revised*

Issued: 11/1/81
Revised: 3/95

This is just as scary as the article I read a while ago, where "It is a general practice in the petfood industry to use cremains of pets not returned to the owner or euthanized at a shelter, as part of the mineral content in both dog and cat food"  This means (at least in my mind) that the "necessary" ash content in petfood, might just be Fido from next door........

HELLO!! that is cannibalism, and did that same "general practice" not orchestrate Mad Cow Disease?  I don't want to be an alarmist, but what the hell are we doing here? 

I have tried to be accepting of the labels that have "animal byproducts" and "ash" as their main ingredients, because, let's face it, you can't find petfood without it, but if table scraps are not good for our pets, how can something that's NOT good for us to the point that it should be destroyed, end up in their "USDA approved pet food"?!?!? 

I didn't want to ruin anybody's day, and if I somehow offended you by writing this, I sincerely apologize, but, like I mentioned before..... it scares me that, not only do we not know what's in our food, any label can be manipulated so it looks like there's nothing wrong, and it's perfectly legal to disguise things that way...... If it can be done in petfood, what do we not know about ours?!

More than ever, if you have a fuzzy roommate.......... Hug it tightly tonight!

This is the link to the petfood article that started this: petfood

In case you think it's a only a European thing......US link
This is the USDA article.... USDA