Moira Drosdovech, m.v.
Pawsitive Veterinary Care, Colombie-Britannique, Canada
http://www.pawsitivevet.com/articles.htm

If you read the ingredients list on most pet food bags, you will notice that three of the five main ingredients are cereals. In the majority of the commercial dry food, cereals represent more than 50% of the ingredients. Dogs and cats are not ruminants; they are carnivores and should be fed in order to respect this classification. A generally accepted idea among pet owners is that dry food acts as a “toothbrush”. It’s a myth. If it were the case, veterinarians would not have to do tartar removal. It is good to know that teeth cleaning represent approximately 50% of the surgical procedures in most veterinary clinics. Moreover, if you look at a dog eating, you will notice that the majority of them just swallow the food before it even touched their teeth. It is by biting and chewing bones or other objects that they keep their teeth clean.

Richard Pitcairn, d.v.m., Ph.D.
PITCAIRN, Richard, H., d.v., Ph.D., HUBBLE PITCAIRN, Susan,
Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats, Emmaus,
Pennsylvania : Rodale Press, p.9

There is no product made of cheap ingredients and transformed in order to be sitting on a shelf for a long time that will ever compete with the mysteriously complex fresh food that Mother Nature has been giving us since the dawn of time. The commercial pet food contains many ingredients we would prefer not to find in there (including garbage from abattoirs, toxic waste from rancid food, filling agents, heavy metals, sugar, pesticides, herbicides, drug residue as well as synthetic colorants, flavor enhancers and preservatives). When you feed your dog with such food, you contribute to another problem. The presence of diverse toxins and pollutants create a need for high quality nutriments in the organism in order to fight or eliminate the contaminants ingested. When the quality of the food is bad, there are always troubles ahead.

Henry Pasternak, dmv, cva
PASTERNAK, Henry, dmv, cva, Healing Pets with Nature’s Miracle Cures,
Highlands Veterinay Hospital : Pacific Palisades, California, 2001, p. 6, 11 et 149

It is important to say that a well-balanced diet for cats or dogs cannot be obtained by providing transformed ingredients served in a dry format in a bag or a can. Sadly, the opposite is a myth perpetrated by the industrial giants and the poorly informed professionals. It is impossible to replace natural and raw ingredients by synthetic vitamins and lifeless ingredients. I believe that the majority of the gastrointestinal tract diseases are the consequence of the ingestion of contaminated dead animals without enzymes. In the wild, aliments are digested by the enzymes they contain. In our modern society, the lack of enzymes in pet food forces the pancreas to do all the job by itself. Nature did not make it that way.

Micheal E. Dym, m.v.
County Line Veterinary Hospital New Jersey, Etats-Unis
www.canineworld.com/drdym/index.htm

Over the past 40 years and 17 generations of dogs and, cats we are seeing tremendous increases in chronic ill health in our pets that was rare back in the early 1960's. Most of these illnesses revolve around breakdown in our pets' immune systems, and include chronic skin/ear allergies, digestive upset, thyroid/adrenal/pancreatic disorders, seizures, gum/ teeth problems, degenerative arthritis, kidney/liver failure, and cancer across all ages and breeds. We are also seeing a record number of behavioral and emotional disorders including alarming and unexplained fears/aggression […] The two biggest factors in our pets' population health decline over these generations has been the severe overuse of multiple vaccines and nutrient poor and toxin filled commercial pet foods.

Earl Mindell, R.Ph., Ph, D.
Professeur de nutrition, Pacific Western University, Los Angeles
MINDELL, Earl, RENAGHAN, Elizabeth, Earl Mindell’s Nutrition & Health
for Dogs, Prima Publishing : Rocklin, California, 1998, p. ix et 13

Dog food manufacturers fund most of the studies on canine nutrition. Theses companies could not affirm their product is wholesome and well balanced if they did a nutritional study in which there was also fresh aliments.

Susan Wynn, m.v.
Georgia Veterinary Specialists, Nutrition and Holistic Medicine
College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia
Alternative Feeding Practice

Over the past decades, the pet food industry has provided convenient and economical foods for domestic animals. Because the public has become comfortable with the idea that commercial pet foods can provide complete and balanced nutrition for the life of the animal, basic diet is no longer generally considered an important source of disease. Pet owners and veterinarians have literally been trained to look elsewhere for causes and treatment options. By ignoring the basic diet when advising pet owners, doctors and retailers are forgetting basic physiological principles: the importance of fresh and varied foods in the diet and biochemical individuality.

Dr Gérard Lippert, m.v.
LIPPERT, Dr Gérard, La malbouffe ou la vie – Enquête sur la
dégradation de l’état de santé de nos chiens, Embourg, Belgique :
Éditions Résurgence, 2006, p.44 et 46

In the wild, animals adapt their alimentation in function of specific parameters; social life, season, breeding period, territory… Everything is in phases and the animal handle his physiology according to his needs. In captivity (which is the way domesticated animals live), far from these specific parameters and in the human world, animals, especially dogs, cannot manage their alimentation the same way than in the wild. The have no other choice than ingesting the colored dry food in order to fill the void more than to have energy. It is the ultimate fast food and a slow path towards degeneration. Like man like dog?

Douglas Knueven, m.v.
Beaver Animal Clinic, Pennsylvanie, Etats-Unis
www.beaveranimalclinic.com

Sadly enough, I got the proof that the excessive amount of carbohydrates in pet food contributes to diabetes. I recently treated a cat with diabetes and I could not control the glucose level despite strong doses of insulin. I then asked the owner to feed his cat with a natural diet free of carbohydrates. Consequently, we were able to control the glucose level of the cat. Moreover, I believe that the high level of carbohydrates in pet food leads to obesity. This is the only answer explaining how and why a hundred pounds labrador could gain weight with only a cup of food per day.