TruthaboutPetFood.com

For inquiring minds that want to know, the following is the rest of the story from my experience at the recent AAFCO meeting.  Plus a few ideas to change the future of pet food.

During the AAFCO meeting the FDA previewed a pet food safety video.  The following is the feedback I sent to Eric Nelson of FDA on the video. 

Day two of the AAFCO Meeting showed me one significant thing…bureaucracy is what we must deal with.  And we are far behind industry; they have been actively working the system for years. 

Some significant progress (I hope) was made this morning to give pet parents a voice.  Below are some quick updates…

Sharon Krebs - the extremely helpful Secretary of AAFCO sent me an email that she has arranged for me an interview with AAFCO Officials.  The time will be Wednesday January 18 at 7 PM.   I was asked to send questions in advance.  So I thought I'd share with all of you the questions I've sent and will be asking of AAFCO Officials...

One of the biggest pitches of pet foods is the 100% Balanced Nutrition claim.  You see that '100% Balanced Nutrition' claim everywhere, even veterinarians advise pet parents to make sure you are feeding one of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) balanced pet foods.  'Your pet will suffer from health problems if you don't feed a balanced diet' is the typical advise.  Well guess what?  Those AAFCO balanced diets have calorie contents that run from well lower to well higher than what is needed for healthy pets.  Pet health is at significant risk even with 100% Balanced Diets. 

One of the newest trends of pet food marketing is a tag line something like 'Chicken is the first ingredient'.  Sounds good doesn't it?  Chicken, first or second on the ingredient list surely means this pet food contains lots of quality meat doesn't it?  No wonder this 'chicken' pet food is a little more expensive - it contains more meat.  Right?  Maybe not.

It is not looking positive.  Thank heavens Dr. Jean Hofve (holistic veterinarian and pet food safety advocate) will be joining me at the AAFCO Meeting next month - without her, it might be no one even speaks to me at the meeting.  Incoming AAFCO President Robert Waltz has not agreed to an interview and FDA Official Dr. Dan McChesney has not responded to two requests for interview. 

How disappointing.  I asked the incoming AAFCO President Robert Waltz for an on camera interview; I wanted all of you to see and 'meet' the faces that make the decisions about pet food.  I was told "No".

Thanks to the support of so many of you, in about a month I'll be heading to the January Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) meeting.  Last year was my first AAFCO meeting (again - thanks to pet owner support for getting me there!).  This year, I hope to step things up a bit and have requested a couple of video interviews in advance, plus I've asked permission to video little snippets of the meeting so that all of you can meet key decision makers of pet food and see how these meetings work.  So, if you could sit face to face with a pet food regulatory decision maker, what would you ask them?