TV vet´s Campaign for Real Pet Food

Today was the launch of the Campaign for Real Pet Food by various high profile individuals in the pet world, including Joe Inglis.

The Campaign is primarily concerned with the lack of openness and honesty in pet food labelling, as the increasingly common behavioural issues in children, associated with the various additives found in food, are equally as prevalent in the nation’s pets.

I have asked Joe for an interview and hope we will hear from all sides of this important debate.

This is what his Campaign has been saying:-

They say some pet food manufacturers are reluctant to come clean about their foods because their ingredients include:-

• Meat and animal derivatives – a generic term for animal proteins which avoids having to specify where the meat comes from – it can be any part of the animal. This enables the pet food company to use whatever meat is the cheapest when they make their food – and there’s no way you can tell what it is.

• Derivatives of vegetable origin – sounds unpleasant, is unpleasant! Another loose terms used to disguise all manner of hidden ingredients such as vegetable residues and even charcoal!

• EC permitted additives – this term hides a list of over 4000 chemicals, many of which have been banned from human foods due to health concerns, including E110 (sunset yellow) and E102 (tartrazine).

• Low quality proteins – cheap protein sources such as soya are used instead of meat in many pet foods. They are heard to digest and much less suitable than real meat proteins.

The Campaign aims to:-

• Educate pet owners about what really goes into pet food

• Encourage pet food companies to be honest about their ingredients

• Promote foods that use good quality ingredients

• Campaign for change in pet food labelling to remove terms such as ‘meat and animal derivatives’ and ‘EC permitted additives’

In order to achieve these aims, they are setting out a publicity campaign to raise awareness of the issues, educate pet owners and apply pressure to governing bodies such as the Pet Food Manufacturers Association and Trading Standards.

They are also encouraging pet food companies who support the campaign to display Campaign for Real Pet Food stickers on their products, so it’s easy to identify real food when making a choice in store. They hope to achieve real change, improving the quality of pet foods and the ability of pet owners to make informed choices about what they feed their pets.

Vets are frequently linking bad behaviour in pets, to an additive-heavy diet. Food allergies and intolerances are also increasingly common.

This debate is going to go on. I read on the UK pets site that "the CRPF is the creation of a group of independent pet food companies which is promoting, in its words, pet food made from good quality, natural ingredients, free from artificial colours, preservatives and flavours, and whose ingredients are openly labelled.

The statement, and a proposed package labelling scheme threaten to drive a wedge between CRPF manufacturers and all other pet foods manufactured from what it calls ´poorer quality ingredients´ or which include artificial preservatives (and so on), and which, says CRPF, ´hide´ behind minimum EU ingredient labelling requirements."

The Pet Food Manufacturers Association, (PFMA) represents over 50 pet food companies, (all the big boys - around 90% of the UK pet food market). It says it has been concerned about possible misinformation releating to the CRPF and has tried and so far failed to arrange meetings with Joe Inglis. . .

Hope he´ll talk to us!