VETgirl Q4 2020 Beat e-Newsletter

BUZZWORDS DESCRIBING PET FOODS: DECIPHERING FACT FROM FICTION TO INTERPRET MYSTERIOUS MARKET CLAIMS JULIE CHURCHILL DVM, PHD DACVN (continued)

7 RECALLS Sadly, pet food safety issues remain a growing concern. We have become more aware of pet food safety issues, most dramatically evident in 2007 with melamine adulteration of wheat gluten which affected many products and led to renal failure in a number of pets. More recently, products have been recalled for aflatoxin contamination, and several more foods or treats with potential salmonella contamination. Pet food safety is now more closely monitored by the FDA, and there are more professional “watch-dogs” sharing information and updates about pet food recall; Veterinary Information Network (VIN), American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), and State Veterinary Medical Association etc. There is now a central Food and Drug Administration (FDA) online safety reporting portal for veterinarians and owners to submit reports of concern about pet foods and treats. These can be submitted electronically: http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ SafetyHealth/ReportaProblem/default. htm If the veterinarian has suspicions about the safety of a food, this warrants a thorough diet history. Check the FDA website and contact the pet food manufacturer to alert and confirm your concerns. You will need information from the product label, so advise client to keep the label with the food until the bag is completely consumed.

exclude any other parts that may not be beneficial to the animal’s health. For all of these reasons, reliance on pet food ingredients as the primary way to assess a pet food product would be a poor indicator of a product’s overall health impact for a pet. As part of the initiative to consider nutrition the 5th vital assessment, a Nutrition Reference Manual provides an excellent description of pet food label requirements and clarifications about ingredient definitions. These are useful tools for team training about how to talk about ingredients with pet owners. 5 NUTRITION RESOURCES Another very credible and useful resource to help staff discuss nutrition myths any many other pet nutrition topics is the Tufts Clinical Nutrition blog: Petfoodology. This content is current and written for pet owners, so the VHCT can direct them to this site. WSAVA has collated a Nutrition FAQ and Myth fact sheet, and created guides for pet owners to help them evaluate nutrition information from the internet about feline and canine nutrition. 6 NUTRITION RECOMMENDATION, A PET-SPECIFIC PROCESS The final steps of making a nutritional recommendation for a pet food are to use your judgment in evaluating a product and match it closely with life stage, lifestyle and health of the pet. To complete the process, you would continue to monitor the pet’s response to make sure you see the expected results, that the patient maintains optimal health.

Pets require nutrients, not ingredients , so a food composed of wonderful sounding ingredients may be less nutritious than one with seemingly less appealing (to the pet owner) ingredients. Clients usually want to prioritize ingredients and much of their information is based on misconceptions. The veterinary team must be careful not to discount client concerns yet, use the opportunity to educate and guide owners in their decision-making about pet foods. Evaluation of ingredient lists remains challenging for many veterinary professionals because transparency about ingredients, ingredient sources, and processing methods beyond the minimum of what is legally required is generally difficult to come by in the pet food industry. In addition, the nutrient-based scientific literature is not comprehensive, especially when compared to the research base for human nutrition. Although there is widespread misunderstanding about pet food ingredients, the major ingredients commonly used in pet food (beef, poultry by product, lamb meal etc.) are fairly well-regulated and defined by AAFCO. Many fruits, vegetables, and other seemingly healthy ingredients have no AAFCO definition for the ingredient. If an ingredient definition does not exist, AAFCO regulations state that it “shall be identified by the common or usual name.” For example, ‘Apples’ or other fruits may contain seeds, stems, leaves, skins, or pulp. While pulp may contribute nutrients to the food, the generic definition does not clearly

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