The new eBook starts by asking: “Are you 100% sure the pet food you’re producing is safe?” This is a topical question just months after global news stories reported that more than one hundred dogs in the USA had died after consuming a well-known brand of pet food contaminated with the naturally-occurring poison aflatoxin. Soon after this, routine sample-testing for aflatoxin in dog foods led the US Food and Drug Administration to instruct 18 pet food brands to recall their products. And as the eBook warns, “If safety failings can happen on this scale in the world’s most sophisticated consumer market, they can happen in any nation where pet food is produced.”
The three big threats to pet food safety and quality are widely prevalent. Potentially lethal aflatoxins can originate in fungus in plants such as corn, peanuts and tree nuts that are used as pet food ingredients. Foreign materials can too easily get into the product stream during the rendering of by-products and the preparation of other pet food ingredients. And dry kibbles can easily become crosscontaminated when processors switch, as some frequently do, from one product batch to the next.
Greater demand needs better standards
In addition to the need to ensure food safety, flawless product quality is also imperative. The eBook spotlights how global demand for high-quality pet food increases as pet owners in developing nations begin to earn more disposable income and shoppers in developed nations drive the premiumization of pet food containing near-human-grade ingredients.
