Last week I had the pleasure of joining some of my favorite pet bloggers out in Topeka to tour the Hill’s Pet Nutrition campus. I really enjoy going to these types of events for a lot of reasons: one, I always learn something. Two, it’s really helpful from my perspective to get to meet the individuals behind a brand and get a feel for who these people are and how they embody a company’s vision.
(I own a grand total of two sweaters, by the way, neither of which actually provides any actual warmth. Good thing we spent all our time indoors. I’m such a wuss.)
The Hill’s vision is this: “to make nutrition a cornerstone of veterinary medicine, which builds on Hill’s heritage of leading-edge research.” Hill’s was founded by a veterinarian in 1948, and they now employ over 120 vets on staff. This is a science driven company, and that philosophy permeated every presentation we had during our daylong tour.
I want to cover a couple of things in the next few weeks that will answer questions a lot of you had for me, about how Hill’s uses animals in research and something really cool about how they used genetics research to show there isn’t a reason to make a breed specific diet, but my attention span is short so I’m not covering it all today.
Today, I’m revisiting one of my favorite topics that was covered by Hill’s Principal Nutritionist Bill Schoenherr: Ingredients. Let’s focus on one of the more, shall we say, controversial ingredients and why a company uses them in pet food.
By-products
When I was little, my grandfather and father used to hunt deer. They would come back from Maine with a big buck strapped to the hood of the Buick, tell me it was Bambi (I know, right?) and hang it in the garage. Then, while I was sobbing in the corner until my grandmother realized what had transpired and whop them with her big purse, my grandfather would dig in to his very favorite part of the meal: the kidneys.
My other grandfather was from Quebec. Though he didn’t hunt, he sure did savor his pigs’ feet. And chicken necks. And liver. “More for me!” he’d gleefully declare when everyone else in the room declined to have a bite. No wonder my grandmother was so tiny.
By-products, all of them. Viscera, to be more specific. Giblets. I call it nasty, but they called it delicious. My point is, while we are culturally inclined to be grossed out by anything that isn’t nice filets of skeletal muscle, by products can be very nutrient-dense sources of proteins, vitamins, and minerals.
Liver, for example, used to be recommended to pregnant women as a source of iron, like that’s just what every nauseated pregnant woman wants to choke down. But I digress.
I have in my hands a copy of the 2011 AAFCO Official Publication (thanks Jason! Told you I would use it!) that gives the legal definition of all the ingredients you see on pet foods. Here is the definition of poultry by-product:
Poultry By-Products must consist of the non-rendered clean parts of carcasses of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, viscera, free from fecal content and foreign matter.
Kind of a broad definition, right? I asked Bill if there was any sort of official stipulation as to what percentage of by-products would be feet versus livers, and he said no.
So here is where it gets tricky: by-products can be a good source of nutrition, a nutrient dense protein source. Or it could be a pile of chicken feet, which is good as a calcium source, but not much else.
According to Bill, Hill’s deals with this by making additional stipulations on their suppliers for minimum protein requirements for their by-products- if it’s just feet, a big pile of calcium, it won’t pass muster and the product is rejected. There are high quality by-products and poor quality by-products. All by-products are not made the same.
Now here’s where it gets even trickier: here’s the definition of poultry:
Poultry is the clean combination of flesh and skin with or without accompanying bone, derived from parts of whole carcasses of poultry or a combination thereof, exclusive of feathers, feet, heads, and entrails.
So everyone wants to see a named meat as the first ingredient- that’s what all the label reading guidelines tell you to do. Something that says, “chicken” could be what you get in the grocery store. That’s what you picture, right? Or it could be a pile of bones and skin of which all the good parts were pulled off to send to the local Krogers, with a little bit of back meat hanging on. You know, the carcass you toss in the trash after you’re done eating your roast chicken. There’s no official minimum requirement for muscle or protein on that, either.
Depending on the quality of your sourcing, by-products could actually be a higher quality ingredient with more meaty stuff in it than something labeled chicken. Now it’s getting Inception-level complex.
Who do you trust? And why do you trust?
So how do you, the consumer, know what a company is using? You don’t. It comes down to trusting the company and the people who make the product, whether or not you believe they are making those choices to select a high quality ingredient from an ethical supplier.
And that, my friends, is a tricky proposition, isn’t it? This is why companies are asking bloggers and journalists in and promising transparency, in an attempt to create that trust in a world where information is much more readily available than it was a decade ago. People want that. I know I do.
I will say this: Hill’s did promise transparency in their presentation, and I believe they provided it. Everyone I heard from was very honest about the process, both good and bad, and answered every question put to them. I hope they continue to provide that and to use bloggers as a conduit to answer questions and continue a dialogue.
I’ll touch on organic versus human grade and holistic labeling in another post. This may or may not have you on the edge of your seat, but really, I find it all utterly fascinating. It’s like some crazy sleight of hand trick.
To see what the other attendees had to say, check out their blogs:
In the meantime, since I have a manual in front of me, are there any product definitions you’re dying to know about? Ever wonder what leather hydrolysate is, for example?
Love this post and can’t wait for the next one! I hope you touch on how it’s actually not permissible to label pet products as “human grade,” even if they are made with foods intended for human consumption.
I absolutely will.
Thanks for this post. The massive pet food industry is fascinating to me. I think it’s great that Hills is trying to be more transparent and reaching out to bloggers. But the fact remains that as consumer, we have little idea what’s going into these foods. A company’s self imposed requirements could be strict or a moving target representing recommended practices. We have no idea.
I’m one of the crazies who believes in the raw diet. I now feed about half raw (home ground mix for the cats) and half canned foods containing 95% or more protein. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of the diet. I realize that the 95% protein could also be low quality. And that does concern me. It’s a process.
I got here the long way after losing two cats over four years. The last cat passed due to renal failure just before the major food recalls of 2007. I had fed Hill’s Science Diet for years prior to that.
One anecdotal data point. Until recently, I had three cats. Six months ago, we gave one cat to my father-in-law. That cat left my home weighing a healthy 10 lbs. Last night, we went to his home for dinner. He had warned us that Sushi had been gaining weight. We went to find a cat that now weighs around 15 lbs. What are they feeding? Hill’s Science Diet dry.
Mind you, they are allowing the cat who has always had structured meal times to free feed. Nevertheless, it hit a nerve.
Thanks for this post. The massive pet food industry is fascinating to me. I think it’s great that Hills is trying to be more transparent and reaching out to bloggers. But the fact remains that as consumer, we have little idea what’s going into these foods. A company’s self imposed requirements could be strict or a moving target representing recommended practices. We have no idea.
I’m one of the crazies who believes in the raw diet. I now feed about half raw (home ground mix for the cats) and half canned foods containing 95% or more protein. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of the diet. I realize that the 95% protein could also be low quality. And that does concern me. It’s a process.
I got here the long way after losing two cats over four years. The last cat passed due to renal failure just before the major food recalls of 2007. I had fed Hill’s Science Diet for years prior to that.
One anecdotal data point. Until recently, I had three cats. Six months ago, we gave one cat to my father-in-law. That cat left my home weighing a healthy 10 lbs. Last night, we went to his home for dinner. He had warned us that Sushi had been gaining weight. We went to find a cat that now weighs around 15 lbs. What are they feeding? Hill’s Science Diet dry.
Mind you, they are allowing the cat who has always had structured meal times to free feed. Nevertheless, it hit a nerve.
My cat is on Hills c/d prescription diet and recently, to help combat weight issues, I switched him from all-dry to mostly wet food. Now he’s very fussy about wet food, and I’m still having to mix in some of the stuff he loves to get him to eat the Hills mince tins of c/d.
I have to admit I was very annoyed when I got the Hills tins for the first time. I ordered the “Hills c/d with Chicken” and should have twigged that the most important word in that title was “with”. The first four ingredients read “Pork by-products, water, pork liver, chicken”. So I have no idea how much chicken is actually in there. Same thing with their tins of “C/d multicare bladder health with seafood”. Pork and seafood together? Ewwww.
To me that just feels deceptive. So no matter how many journalists and bloggers they invite, it doesn’t feel transparent if their marketing department looks like they’re trying to spin the product. I’d have still bought it if it said “pork and chicken” because my cat needs it and I would have been less upset about feeling like Hills somehow fleeced me.
Labels are SO sneaky. Anything that says “with” only needs to have 3% of the product consist of that ingredient. I agree- and it’s many companies that do this.
Well… that explains why it looks nothing like chicken and more like… really icky bolognaise sauce. I am still mixing it with 1/4 of the Applaws Chicken (which actually looks like chicken breast meat!) as he’s not quite a fan of Hill’s but LOVES his Applaws. We did have to play the battle of wills once already so I’ve made the transition really slow to avoid him trying to “fast” in an effort to guilt me into feeding him stuff he likes better. In a few days or so I’ll cut it down to just half a teaspoon…
I am currently feeding EVO, but I know they were bought out and I’m not sure that the quality is what it used to be. I guess I’m wondering how, realistically, you can buy high-quality food for your dogs and trust that there is honesty in the company’s dealings, especially with the slippery definitions in the labeling. I’m beginning to think the only way to feed them good food is to cook everything for them, and I just can’t do that…
That’s the stinker. There is really no way to know, even if you read labels, just how good or bad something is. You just have to trust that the company is doing the right thing. And, well, that is a tall order for a lot of people.