Everyone wants to provide their much loved Golden Retriever with the best, most cost effective food they can but doing so is very difficult. the challenge is determining what exactly is IN that food and what is best for your dog. While it is not all-inclusive, read on to get some ideas of how dog food is labeled and how to read it.
Who regulates dog food labeling?
It’s the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to petMD.com the FDA is the only authority that has regulatory strength on dog food ingredient lists; think of them in this case as the “Ingredient list police”. The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is a respected group containing people from the FDA , animal control officials as well as government officials from Canada and Puerto Rico. The AAFCO is considered by many (including the FDA) as the authority in this area. So in the end the FDA is the police force but it utilizes outside expertise to help along with it’s own research make it’s determinations.
How is the ingredient list order important?
The ingredient list is required to list the ingredients by weight or volume. The math is the same so I’ll refer to weight in this article since that is what is most commonly used since meats are heavier than fillers in most cases. So if the ingredient list starts with products A, B and C, there will be more ounces of A than B and more ounces of B than C. While this author would MUCH prefer a percentage of the overall food rating, the much more deceptive “order by weight” is used and enforced by the FDA. Note that the manufacturers are not required to actually show an actual percentage by weight so VERY few do.
It gets even more insidious since the weight that is reported is not the actual weight in the final food product. According to petMD.com, the weight useed for the list also includes water weight before processing. Meats have quite a lot of water in them that is cooked out during processing while grains and veggies have a MUCH lower water content so they end of being a larger percentage by reported weight once processed. This means that the actual weight of some ingredients (mostly the good ones) are artificially inflated on the list. Mississippi State University did an interesting write up on calculating “Dry Matter” if you are interested.
Ordering dog food ingredients by weight is deceiving.
So currently everyone is all worked up about “Grain Free” foods and their possible contribution to Taurine Deficiency in some larger dog breeds and it’s relation to the possibility of causing the heart condition Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) in certain large dog breeds (including golden Retrievers). I’ll use this as an example scenario where ingredient ordering by weight can be an issue so a little background is in order but I’ll save the larger Taurine issue for another post.
The UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine (UC Davis) has done a number of really important studies on the food related causes of Taurine deficiency and it has been said that peas, lentils, other legumes, potatoes and rice bran (the shell of the rice kernel) could cause problems with proper absorption of Taurine. It’s been said that these products should not be in the top 5 ingredients in the list.
Here is where it gets insidious: If peas is #6 and potatoes are #7 and lentil is #8, then you must add up those three to figure out their place in the list. It is entirely possible that the total of the bad ingredients are actually #1 on the list; remember that the list is ordered by weight; it’s basic math.
Ingredient splitting
Another related but slightly different practice in ingredient lists is called “Ingredient Splitting” which is the common practice of taking very similar ingredients, preparing them in a slightly different way then listing them separately to move the further down on the list.
Using the example of “Ground Whole Wheat” and “Wheat Flour” along with “Ground Rice” and “Rice Bran”, petnet.io shows that overall wheat and rice could in fact be the largest ingredient by weight followed by “Rice” followed by “Chicken” which was the first ingredient on the original list. While this is far from a purely scientific study I believe this to be true and is simple math.
Summary
Ingredient lists on pet food is ordered by weight and regulated by the FDA largely based on recommendations by AAFCO. It is common and currently legal practice for pet food manufacturers to put multiple smaller amounts of fillers in the list by order of weight in order to make chicken or some other good protein sit highest on the list. It is common practice to “split” similar ingredients that are processed in slightly different ways and list them separately to move them further down on the list for the same reason. No overall percentage is required to be listed so there is no completely mathematically sound way for the consumer to be fully informed and make good decisions. The best way I can suggest in our current world to make informed decisions is to be fully aware of these tricks and do your own form of math. Note that I’ve seen a very few dog foods that do list a percentage but they are rare.
References
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Association of American Feed Control officials (AAFCO)
UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
About the author.
Bryan Curry loves all dogs in general, especially Golden Retrievers. He has had dogs for all but 6 months of his long life and all have lived happy and much longer than average lives. Bryan and his wife Terri are co-owners of Texas TLC Goldens; a small responsible breeder producing high quality Golden Retriever puppies.