Allow me to debunk a couple of things that I've found while perusing the sites mentioned by several of you. The website found here:
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food ... /index.phpseems to state that all major brands of dog food are worthless and that you ought to spend your hard earned dollars on some stuff called Innova. Now, I don't have a dog and I don't buy food. But my good sense would seem to indicate that if a dog food was as horrible for you pet as some of you seem to think, there wouldn't be any people buying it. That's not good business. Personally, and I've known a lot of dogs and dog owners through the years, I've heard of even one case where a dog (or cat for that matter) died prematurely because of the food they ate. I doubt dogs go to the vet and get slapped with a cause of death sticker that reads "ate Purina" on it.
My first question about the above site was, "Who exactly publishes this thing, and what qualifications do they have to be speaking about it?" Well, no more than 3 minutes of searching led me to a company known as "All Enthusiast INC." What do they do? They run websites that allow people to review products. They also affiliate themselves with various products and sell them through their websites. They have no veterinarians on staff that I know of, nor do they have any dog food representatives on their payroll. In my estimation, this makes them slightly under-qualified to be deriding dog foods in favor of any others.
Also, there is a link at the top of the page that spouts meaningless buzz phrases such as, "Is your dog food killing your dog?" This led me to a site entitled:
dogfoodsecrets.info
which proclaimed that numerous problems and horrific consequences were in the offing for those who fed their dogs the wrong things. The author of this site, Lawrence Perrino, also seems remarkably under-qualified to make the radical claims he makes. He's not a vet, he's not a doctor, and he's not a dog food manufacturer. As far as I could tell, he spews for these scary buzz phrases on several websites and his qualifications for doing so are that he (and this is an actual quote), "worked in a vet's office" and "asked one he trusted which food was best." He "worked in a vet's office?" Doing what? Janitorial work? We'll never know, because he doesn't say.
He also comes up with such gems as "Products unfit for human consumption are put into dog food." Well, gee, that's horrible. I'll remember that next time I'm opening a can of IAMS for my supper. This is totally irrelevant; some things that dogs can digest, humans can't and visa versa. Ever try giving your dog chocolate? It's safe for human consumption! Dogs meanwhile, can eat dead fish, their own feces, and a variety of other unsavory things and never have consequence one from it, while a human being who ate such things would probably be very sick indeed (not to mention mentally ill).
Apparently, this guy Lawrence Perrino believes himself to be some sort of muckraking journalist, channeling Upton Sinclair by way of Michael Moore. "This just in folks, dog food is KILLING your pets! It's got dead dogs, feces, retarded children, aircraft parts, nuclear waste, used condoms, and the body of Jimmy Hoffa ground up in it!" (not an actual quote, but you get my drift).
Who knows who this guy even is, and whether or not he's paid by the Innova company to shill their food at every turn. For real people, instead of believing every piece of garbage that comes your way, try doing some research before accepting whatever you read as Gospel truth. I highly doubt (although I can't be sure, since I haven't done any tests on the dog foods myself) that there is one fact backing up the claim that certain dog foods will kill your pets. In fact, it's is most likely that IAMS or Science Diet will keep your pet alive and happy for many, many years, just like it always has.
Thanks for that, I'll have to look for something new..
