The recent Menu Foods pet food recall has brought international attention to the food safety issues associated with commercial pet food production. But the food still on store shelves also has a significant negative impact on animals. The pet food industry contributes to animal cruelty at factory farms, and the questionable ingredients in most pet food threaten the health and safety of companion animals.

The 2007 Recall

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received tens of thousands of reports of pets who have become sick or died, possibly because of the tainted pet food. The agency is investigating at least 8,000 of those cases. Half of those animals died.

Melamine and cyanuric acid cause serious health effects in cats and dogs who eat tainted food imported from China. The industrial chemicals were combined with wheat and rice to boost the protein content of food, making it attractive to manufacturers looking for cheap ways to make their products more appealing to the corporations that they supply.

Farm Animals Also Affected

In late April, reports surfaced that the melamine-tainted pet food scraps were fed to more than 6,000 pigs at farms in California, New York, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma and Ohio. In addition, more than 2.5 million chickens were fed tainted food at facilities in Indiana and Missouri. Tainted food was also used at U.S. fish farms.

Many animals were quarantined and will eventually be killed. Compared to the total annual slaughter statistics, these animals represent a small fraction of the deaths due to factory farming in America.

According to The Humane Society of the United States, more than 10 billion land animals are slaughtered for food in the U.S. every year. This figure does not include fish, ostriches, emus, geese, pigeons, rabbits and other “miscellaneous categories” of animals. In addition, the U.S. government estimates more than 100,000 marine mammals are killed every year by the U.S. commercial fishing industry, according to Farm Sanctuary.

Agriculture inspectors said they expected to find additional cases of contaminated food at U.S. farms before their investigation was completed. Health officials do not think human health is at risk, but they admitted they do not know exactly how the toxin would affect people who ate fish, chickens or pigs fed the contaminated food.

Past Pet-Food Recalls

These most recent recalls are not an anomaly.

In 2005, products manufactured at a Diamond Pet Food plant in South Carolina were recalled because they were tainted with toxic fungi that caused illness and deaths in more than 100 dogs and cats.

In 2003, the FDA found contaminated pet food made from a cow with “mad cow disease,” or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The products were manufactured by Champion Pet Food in Alberta, Canada, and imported into the U.S. Although dogs are not known to contract BSE or transmit the disease to humans, the pet food was nonetheless recalled.

The Reality of Pet Food

The reality is, even commercial products that have not been recalled still contain questionable pet food ingredients. Pet food contains material from rendering plants - including euthanized companion animals from vet clinics and animal shelters, as well as diseased farm animals found unfit for human consumption.

All of this leads me to one inescapable conclusion: The pet industry causes animal suffering and deaths, both for the animals used to make pet food and for the animals that eat the pet food.

We humans have a responsibility to do better. We should care as much about what we’re feeding our companion animals as we do what we feed ourselves. Standards for products fed to animals should not be any less rigorous than those for “human-grade” foods. And we also should care about the amount of animal cruelty at factory farms that dominate the pet food and human food supply.