OPINION
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Disclaimer: I don’t own a pet. My interest in this topic was aroused by a recent news item about an outbreak of vitamin D poisoning attributed to manufactured pet food. And when we talk about manufactured pet food we are really only talking about what we feed to the cats and dogs who share our homes. In our suburban environment we procure their feed, largely, at the supermarket, not our friendly and verging on the extinct, local butcher. And it comes in cans. Last year, a veterinarian treated a number of animals that made her, and me, think about Australia’s pet food industry. She saw three dogs who had acquired vitamin D toxicity from their food, something that was confirmed through blood tests. These dogs presented with increased thirst and increased urination. And a couple of them were also vomiting. While two of these dogs recovered after a few weeks, one went into mild kidney failure and now has permanent kidney damage. Eventually this was attributed to a ‘bone-building’ supplement added to many dog foods.
As you do, I carelessly Googled ‘pet food’ by way of preliminary enquiry, and invoked a deluge of references. It is obviously a big, a very big, business. I pressed on. First question: is the manufacture of pet food in Australia regulated? No, apparently. This is surprising, given that there are more pets than humans in Australia. Around 40% of households own a dog, and 27% a cat, the feeding of which is estimated to be worth around $5.7 billion. In 2018 the Senate enquired into ‘regulatory approaches to ensure the safety of pet food’ (https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Rural_and_Regional_Affairs_and_Transport/SafetyofPetFood). The report of that enquiry makes interesting reading, but as is so often the case, no action was taken.
Even more interesting is the submission to that enquiry by the Pet Food Industry Association of Australia. (https://pfiaa.com.au/pet-food-standards/). If you read it you may never open another can of pet food, given what is apparently permissible. There is an Australian Standard for the manufacture of pet food. It costs over $100. I didn’t buy it, and I imagine that this cost would be a barrier to popular access. I also found that there is a welter of informal mission statements, adherence to which is voluntary. A minority of companies even publish their own ‘standards’. Evidence of any enforcement is hard to come by.
There is some good news. The Australian Veterinary Association runs something called petFAST Reporting. “PetFAST is a system to track health problems in dogs and cats that are suspected of being associated with pet food, treats and pet meat. It is designed to identify possible patterns that might point to a cause. PetFAST is a voluntary joint initiative of the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) and the Pet Food Industry Association of Australia (PFIAA)” (https://www.ava.com.au/library-journals-and-resources/ava-other-resources/petfast/). I’m a bit sceptical about the industry connection but I guess it’s better than having them outside the tent.
There is little in the way of pet food prosecutions in Australia. In 2021 the ABC News reported that “no charges have been laid over the sale and manufacture of contaminated pet food which killed 24 dogs and made a further 44 seriously ill with liver disease in Victoria”. A joint investigation by PrimeSafe and Agriculture Victoria found pet food manufacturing laws were not broken (!) and there was no fault in the supply chain. While retailers have recalled the toxic meat, authorities are concerned more dogs could die if pet owners still have the contaminated pet food in their freezers at home (www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-19/pet-food-case-closed-but-no-charges-over-dead-dogs/100389272).
The dogs had eaten pet food made from meat from the Maffra District Knackery in Gippsland. It was found to contain indospicine, a toxin found in a low-growing native Australian herb in the Indigofera genus. You would be justified in suspecting that the carcasses of cattle which had died as a consequence of grazing on this weed were used in the manufacture of the pet food, and that the carcass meat used was not only contaminated as a result, but that the cattle had died accidentally from unknown causes, rather than having been slaughtered in an approved and licensed facility. There have been hundreds of similar recalls of pet food in Australia over the last decade. There is, incidentally, a shortage of approved and operating slaughterhouses in Tasmania, due to infractions in practice reported by animal liberationists. The only operating facility in the Classifieds area has a chequered history and is currently for sale.
The moral of this story? Don’t feed your pet with processed food unless you know what’s in it.
John Fleming II
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