Pet food as food?

Hello All,
It all started with a conversation about designer puppy chow. Someone mentioned that there were brands of dog and cat food that were actually only out of date human food. Someone else said that they had eaten some cat food and thought it better than your average chunk light tuna. It spiraled from there.
For my preparations, I have vacuum-packed a few large bags of dog food for my very small dog (probably a good 2 months worth). If it came down to it, could that be considered human food? I can’t imagine it would taste very good, but it would beat starving. Would you eat dog food to stay alive?
How would you prepare it? (I was thinking a sort of mush cooked in boiling water)
Which brand would you pick?
Thanks.
M

Back years ago when I was a den leader in Cub Scouts, some used to recommend taking dog bone treats in your backpack for emergency survival food. The thinking being, the scouts would probably eat anything remotely edible without saving it for emergency use. Dog bones are probably not considered "remotely edible" unless you're in the middle of an emergency (except to dogs, of course!) I never choked one down myself, but assume they wouldn't kill you if you ate one.

I stock Purina Puppy Chow in our hunting trailer. I put it in clean 7 gallon drywall bucket. I added a small piece of dry ice wrapped in a rag to evacuate the oxygen. The dog food seems to last forever.

I have a small baggy of it in my hunting pack. We call it Redneck Trail Mix.

Our hunting camp predicts I will be killed by a truck while crossing a highway when I stop to lick myself. (Bad Joke)

Take the ingredients label to a nutritionist/ food doctor and see what they say.

I'd make sure to take plenty of red pepper flakes and seasoned salt with me to "make it taste better". A little self-deception goes a long way.

I doubt any company or professional person would recommend pet food as safe, even if they believed it was. Imagine the liability issues, loss of license, or being publicly pilloried by the media on a slow news day.

You could frame it this way: "Doc, I accidentally ate a few handfuls of puppy chow, thought it was trail mix, here's the label, is this dangerous to my health?"

I'd be cautious about the pet food thing. My dogs and cats find and eat all sorts of stuff that would make me extremely ill. Clearly their digestive systems are a lot tougher than mine, and they're able to deal with pathogens that would knock me flat.

However, if I was genuinely starving, I would eat pet food.

Quote from 'The Art of Travel' by Francis Galton



Just to put the question into perspective, really it is not a difficult question to answer.

I didn't even think of the legal/liability aspect. I would never ask them for their approval or recommendation. I think the "OOPS" approach is pretty good though. It would let us know what ingredients could be harmful.

By the by, pet food labels are alot more easy to read than human food labels. Less 27-syllable chemical names.

Back in my younger leaner days, hitching around the country, I found Gaines Burgers to be sufficient to get me through the tough stretches.

On the psychological side, they are easy to imagine as hamburger steak!!!

I suspect recommending that, after you eat up all of his/her food, you might as well eat fido too (to prevent its starving to death) would be in bad taste (no pun intended)...

Better be careful saying stuff like this to a doc. They may end up putting you on a 72 hour mental health hold for evaluation! ;-)

Just keep in mind that certain nutrients/components (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, etc.) in pet food can come from sources not under the same level of quality control as human foods. The most recent problem was the melamate contamination of pet food from components shipped from China. Protein sources can often come from fishmeal, which has caused Salmonella spp. outbreaks, when the feed was not properly pasteurized. Aflatoxins can come from fugally contaminated wheat/cereals even if sterilized/pasteurized post production. If you have the choice, stay away from “open formula” diets, which can derive their nutrients from any source (i.e. protein from fishmeal vs. soy beans) and choice a “certified formula” which must define the source of the various nutrients/components.

Also keep in mind that dogs, cats and humans may or may not digest certain components or have the ability to combine nutrients - i.e. the ability of humans, dogs and cats to combine essential amino acids as complete proteins is not the same. Humans, non-human primates and guinea pigs all require an external daily source of Vitamin C, dogs and cats do not, so dog and cat food is not fortified with Vitamin C.

While most brand name dog and cat food companies have well-established departments for nutrient determination and quality control, these foods are design and balanced for dogs and cats, not humans. Short-term use, providing there is no chemical or biological contamination, should not cause harm to anyone, but I would avoid long-term use.

Pete

LOL, haertig. Most people would lock us away for even thinking about such a thing. :-)

This is exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping for. I plan to store corn and grain and other dry food stuffs for myself and my family. If that all ran out though... I'd eat dog food. I'd cook it a lot first. I don't think it would (or could) be more contaminated than Mississippi river carp and there are a lot of people who eat those. I'm glad to hear that other people have thought about it.

I don't know if it's urban legend or not, but for some reason a story of senile elderly lady living on dog food come to mind. Living by NYC I used to hear about crazy stuff like that all the time. There might be an article somewhere.

Back before Y2K I did a ton of research into food storage and emergency food sources, storage, shelf life and such, I even made several phone calls and sent emails to many pet food companies, and what I learned was that virtually all domestic dog and cat food made in the USA is safe for human consumption.

Most companies are afraid of lawsuits from small children eating from pet food dishes.

Dry dog and cat food will be the last items off of the shelves, along with the drier canned pet foods.

There are only 3 days of supplies in American Cities' store shelves at any given moment.

It normally takes 3 hours for the "unprepared" to clean out the store shelves when a forecasted event (severe storm, hurricane, etc) warning has been issued.

It takes about 3 to 7 days (normal times) for the stores to order, receive, and restock the shelves.

After an event has come and gone, it'll take more like 7-14 days for supplies to make it from the time of the order being placed, to the shelves being restocked. There will be communications problems, computor problems, fouled roadways, etc; that will add time (days) to the process.

My personal opinion: By the time the "prepared" need to resupply, there will not be any dog or cat food left on the shelves.

Military (National Guard, USCG, etc.) and civilian (Salvation Army, Red Cross, local Churches, etc.) organizations will have become established on scene, providing food (MRE's, hot coffee, etc), clean drinking water (bottled and tanked in), porta-potties, emergency shelters (public buildings, tent cities, or the newly planned "Containerized Family Shelters"), Emergency Medical care (Military and civilian), Law Enforcement (including anti-sniper teams), etc, etc, etc......

I recall something similar -- an African nation in crisis turned away a huge shipment of food aid (corn?) because it might have been genetically modified.

Another time, grain (wheat) was rejected because it wasn't #1 grade intended for flour (and so fell into the category of feed grain, though it was perfectly safe to eat). This was a tragedy, because this ship happened to be in the area and could have been diverted, feeding people within days. It took a month for other aid to start arriving.

I don't intend to dump on Africans here, but rather to illustrate how pride and lack of knowledge can prevent people from making best use of resources at hand. I suspect that most Westerners would have the same reaction to being served 'cattle food' even in a crisis. Eating pet food, even if reasonably safe and nutritious, would be such a horrifying indignity that they'd rather starve.

I didn't read all the answers to this topic but I would say that in an an emergency it would be good to eat . I remember tasting some of the dogs food when I was a kid and it was awfull . But when you're REALLY hungry I'm sure just about anything would taste good .
There are some good quality pet foods around that are supposed to be " human grade " food .
I'm pretty sure that dry pet food has a long shelf life .

Premium brand canned dog food like Merrick, Organix, Newmans, Wellness, etc, are surely edible and might even be tasty. However, they're also something like $3 a can so unless you're rich I doubt you'll be stocking that stuff up. JMO, but unless I was absolutely starving I wouldn't touch the non-premium stuff. Who the hell knows whats in there. There was a thread about pet food recently and someone posted a link to a company that makes dehydrated raw food. Looks cheaper than the premium canned stuff.

http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/index.shtml

I wouldn't feed most commercial pet food to my dogs, let alone eat it myself.

http://www.preciouspets.org/report.htm

Surviving just isn’t surviving if you don’t have a nice, shiny coat.

Here's a link to a documentary about a guy who ate nothing but "Monkey Chow" for a week. He survived, and the first few days didn't look too bad, but he was hurting at the end.

http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html

Sorry if it's a re-post, can't remember if I found it posted on this site or a different one.

If you read the pet food labels, and deciphered what they mean, you wouldn't want to eat most of it. Let me offer a few examples.

"Meat" (non-specific) means any kind of meat, including "unspecified" kinds like roadkill, euthanized animals, dogs, cats, llama and raccoons.

"By-products" means mostly any part of an animal EXCEPT muscle meat: feet, combs, wattles, cancerous tumors, intestines, gonads, lungs, etc.

"Animal Digest" is the really repulsive stuff: it can be unspecified parts of unspecified animals. The animals used can be obtained from almost any source and no control is in place over quality or contamination. Any kind of animal, like the "4-D animals" (dead, diseased, disabled, or dying prior to slaughter), goats, pigs, horses, rats, euthanized at animal shelters, restaurant and supermarket refuse. Then they either cook it all down, or use enzymes to break it down, then they spray it over the chicken feed (below) to give it the meaty flavor. If you HAVE to ever eat it, try to think of it as "gravy".

That's just the meat stuff. There are products like Old Roy, the Wally World special, that has virtually no meat protein in it except Old Roy himself, and he's been thinned down something awful.

The main ingredients of most well-known pet foods are lower-quality grains that aren't suitable for human consumption: corn, wheat, soy, rice, barley, etc. In other words, chicken feed, at two or three times the price of layer mix.

Some more of the good stuff is the reason that major pet food companies are in the pet food business to begin with: they are the original source of human food waste, the leftovers from the processing of food for people. Here's where they get rid of the sugar beet pulp, the brewer's wastes, etc. In case you didn't realize it, the biggest pet food companies are owned by human food companies: Nestles owns Purina, Alpo, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Pro Plan & Mighty Dog; Del Monte owns Gravy Train, Nature's Recipe & 9-Lives; Proctor & Gamble owns IAMS and Eukanuba. The pet food business prevents them from having to pay dump fees.

Down toward the bottom of the list of ingredients are the vitamin and mineral supplements. They are added because all the ingredients listed above them have had most of their nutrition removed, or it isn't accessible to the dog or cat's digestive system.

And if this isn't enough to put you off the stuff and even refuse to feed it to your pets, the dry foods with all the grains tends to give you awful gas. Enough to light up Seattle for at least a week.

The really good pet foods, with human-consumption-grade ingredients are beyond my means for either me or the dog.

Oh, I almost forgot. My vet says dogs have a fast digestive system (um, faster or shorter or something), so things like Salmonella doesn't bother them much. You can buy a 35 lb box of turkey necks frozen in a lump, defrost them, refreeze them singly so you can pull out however many you want for a few days, and it won't bother the dog. It is highly recommended that we don't do that with our food. Apparently, we retain our food for a longer period of time, thus absorbing more of the nasties if they are available.

My vet also says that over the years, he has come to believe that commercial pet foods are responsible for many of the problems that our pets show up with, like skin problems, chronic gas and diarrhea, and developmental issues and cancers, kidney and liver problems. He says about good pet nutrition: "Pay now for good food, or pay me later to try to fix things, but you're going to pay."

And that's all I have to say about that. I think.

Except (you knew it, right?)... everyone has neighbors who are nice and helpful and let you borrow their tools. You also have the other kind who, in a widespread disaster-type situation, will cause nothing but trouble. As I said earlier about bears: meat is meat.

Sue (just call me Ms. Alfred Packer if push comes to shove)

"...just call me Ms. Alfred Packer..."

First cousin to John "Liver Eating" Johnson (Johnston), right???

Don't know about the canned stuff, but many years ago a friend's doctor advised her that it was actually healthier for her toddler to snack on milk-bone dog biscuits than the candy and stuff they sell for kids. More nutritious, no sugar etc.

Don't know if the doctor is still in practice.

I do know there is some dog food even my dog won't eat.

Maybe the lost grand-daughter to Ed Gein! The newspaper in Plainfield, WI reported rumors of a daughter in labor in 1957. No proof of existance ever surfaced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein

I agree it can be expensive but there's a way to do it cheaper. I only buy premium dry (Canidae) and try to get as much fresh meat as possible. Mix that with some steamed vegetables if you want and you're good to go. The trick I've found is to get to know your local butcher (even better if he likes dogs) and ask them to put aside some 'scraps' for you. Its a thousand times cheaper than the premium canned/dehydrated stuff and they'll always throw in some extras.

For the next month or longer, our dogs are eating free venison thanks to our buddies that hunt. Some guys just want the racks, and are more than happy to give up the carcass.

Can I move into your kennel????? Your dogs probably won't mind,,,much!!!!!

I asked the dogs and they said:



"Sure, come on by. The venison will be gone soon".

Well...

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've used Meow Mix as bait in fish and crawfish traps before. Works well, better than the food pellets they serve fish in hatcheries.

Canned food would work as bait for traps targeting smaller predators and scavengers.


As for human consumption, grind/crush the dry into powder and use it with flour, turn it into a gruel or to thicken stock. The canned, soup or mix with a dry starch source and make patties. Not the best tasting option, but it would work. Pretty much anything a cat or dog can eat, humans can. But I also feed my animals better than the grade of horror that Susan mentioned.

Food for pet rodents, probably treat it like dry cat/dog food. Most bird seed is also edible as is by humans, or just needs cracking.

Same thing happened a couple of times when when of the vet supply companies made simliar offers.

As far as I can tell, penicillin and tetracycline should be the same for human as for animal, but I'm not a microbiologist or pharmacist. I will say safely that vet suture kits and human suture kits are pretty much interchangeable. *lifts my beard so the scar can be seen* As should be hypos and sterile saline and the like.

From a previously employed crawfisherman, hoopnetter, crab fisherman, and sometimes outlaw (in the old, old days):

Fish work very well for crab and crawfish traps after being left under the hot sun for a day.

Cans of tuna fish with holes punched through each flat side; gunny sacks that have a few pounds of rice or dog food (dry) dropped into the water at a nice shady spot over deep water provides for VERY good fishing most of the time you drop a hook into that water.

Hoopnets set into pairs with a "seine" net strung between them.

These are some ways to assure a good supply of food with very little interruption.

There are potential long term issues with GM crops, but so far none of the fears of crazy allergies have really born fruit.

Something people don't think about in the US is the use by dates. Most of us let them slip by for a bit, but restaurants and food services can not, nor can they usually fridge the left overs after service. A lot of food shelves and soup kitchens could use "recycled food", which isn't the same as dumpster diving. And it comes under "good samaritan" guidelines at the federal level, so it is safe. But if you call it "recycled food", people freak out- the same people who would eat a t-bone that has been sitting in their fridge for two weeks after purchasing. In the past I've had to use soup kitchens a few times- I honestly didn't care.

Same thing- people get funny about what goes in their mouth. Pride is a part of it.

Agreed. Pet food can be better used to catch more tasty food.

"There are potential long term issues with GM crops, but so far none of the fears of crazy allergies have really born fruit."

One of the main problems with GM crops is that we have no choice in the matter. They are contaminating the carefully raised and collected seeds of crops that have a wider genetic base than what scientists are producing. Seeds with a narrow genetic base could conceivably meet up with some kind of disease or pest that wipes them out, and what do you think will happen then?

The creators and owners of GM crops have lied from the beginning. They said they would be cheaper -- they're not, they're quite expensive, but just wait until that's all there is. They said the pollen wouldn't travel far -- it does. They said it wouldn't make any difference to livestock -- the livestock won't eat it unless it's the only choice they have.

The owners of the GM seeds are sueing farmers for raising GM crops because they didn't buy the seeds from the patent owner, despite the farmers having no choice because the GM plants are cross-polinating their previously clean crops. When GM crops first came out, the scientists swore on a stack of Bibles that the pollen wouldn't travel more than 1/8 of a mile. The pollen is in the stratosphere, and is contaminating crops in countries where GM crops are not allowed (like England).

I think of the GM crops like African Killer Bees: they move into a new area, cross with the gentle Italian honey bee, and now you've got killer honey bees.

They are using taxpayers money to create these GM crops, and they are in production without actually knowing what the longterm results will be. "Perfectly safe" they say, when they don't really know, because they put them on the market with no testing. "Perfectly safe"... like DDT and Agent Orange.

They are being forced on people throughout the world (esp poor countries) even if they don't want them.

From WebMD: "When [Dr.] Pusztai [Scotland] fed rats GM potatoes genetically engineered to produce a supposedly safe insecticide called the GNA lectin, all the animals showed potentially pre-cancerous cell growths, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged to the immune system--with most changes appearing after just 10 days. Since other rats fed normal potatoes spiked with GNA lectin--even 700 times more GNA lectin than was present in the GM potatoes--did not develop these problems, Pusztai's results indicated that the problem lay with genetic engineering process itself. And that meant that all GM foods created from the same process, including those already on the market, might produce unintended ill effects."

Also from WebMD: 'Reality is that the FDA has absolutely no GMO safety testing requirements, and GM ingredients are ubiquitous in prepared foods. Unless a processed food contains only organic ingredients, it is highly likely to contain GM ingredients. The "research" that supports GMO safety is voluntarily provided by companies on their own GM crops and has been described by critics as "meticulously designed to avoid finding problems".'

But read the whole thing on GM foods from WebMD yourself, it's very interesting (it starts about 1/3 of the way down the page): http://blogs.webmd.com/integrative-medic...ss-archive.html

Two years ago, it was discovered in Canada and the U.S. that pigs fed GM feed were showing an increase in lack of conception, and some were producing just bags of water. You wanted grandchildren?

From PigProgress.net: "GM-fed pigs -- New scientific evidence, revealed in the report, indicates that small amounts of GM DNA end up in the animal tissues and milk of GM-fed pigs and other animals. "This is contrary to assurances by the Food Standards Association," says the report. The effects of such GM DNA are alarming – "lesions in the gut, unexplained deaths and stunted offspring growth"."

And "60% of the maize and 30% of the soya used in feed by pig and dairy farmers originates from GM crops - the study found. In addition, it highlighted the fact that most supermarkets are permitting the use of GM feed in their meat supplies. "None of this food is labelled correctly as genetically modified due to a loophole in the law," the association commented."

An interesting article from Greenpeace on what Monsanto is doing:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111

Like many other things, most Americans believe what they're told. Pity about the Santa Claus thing, though.

Sue

That's also my understanding in the UK. It may be made from the less appetising animal parts but if it's nourishing enough for my cats it's a resource for me. You need to watch for vitamin deficiency but that's true for any mono-diet (cf rabbit-starvation).

Frankly I'd rate it above the produce of certain human fast-food outlets.

Yes, the four legged featherless genetically engineered chickens raised in large metal enclosed sheds in Thailand aren't particularly appetising either. The Horror, the Horror.

Ive seen the homeless eat it all the time. They may not be in the best health but they are alive.

Happy holidays, everyone. I've been on a trip for a while.

I think Pete pretty well sums it up. Pet food is food. It'll nourish you, but it isn't made with human dietary needs in mind, so it's not the ideal food source for long term use if other options were available. But if I were stranded somewhere and had to pick between eating a couple cans of dog food or facing the possiblity of eating human food that could be spoiled or needing to try and find "natural" edible things to eat from the forest, I would prefer the dog food.

I remember back in kindergarden or first grade, me and my friends had one short spell when we'd pass around a box of dog treats to eat on that long school bus ride. It started as a dare, if I recall, but then we all sort of liked them. Seemed a bit hard on the teeth, though. Anyway, just a passing fad.

i have heard of climbers putting dog biscuits in the
Ten Essential's" bag..i idea being they would not be tempted
to "snack" away the survival food..also some guys took
dog bisquits as rations on a canoe trip into Labrador in
the 1960's..at least that what a Long Island newspaper
reported..another group said they met them drying the
biscuits on the rocks after a dump in a river..good story
but never found any follow up

I have heard that many of canned cat food comes off the same canning line producing people food. Same contents and same cat. Different label and the cat food sells for half the cost.

This makes a lot of sense to me. One production line and standard saves confusion, costs and possible law suits.

I don't know if you could sue if grandma got sick from eating cat food. But I do know that some of the exotic pedigreed cats are worth many thousands of dollars. If Boots the cat gets sick and keels over because of the pet food the pet food company will be getting a nasty, and expensive, certified letter from a lawyer.

Same thing with drugs labeled for animals. I talked to a vet who pointed out that those drugs are used on animals that are insured for sums of money usually reserved for large tracts of land or military spending.

I suspect that in both cases if it is considered safe for animals it is probably safe for humans.

"...canned cat food comes off the same canning line producing people food. Same contents..."


I have never opened a can of people food that smelled anything like what most cat foods do. Some of those things STINK!!!

We've never bought a can of cat foot, always the stuff in the bag. My parents have had cats for years on the farm and they eat table scraps.
I worked reatil through college and one of the cashiers was in tears one day when her shift ended. Someone wanted to buy dog food with food stamps and the law won't allow it. So he went back and picked up a big steak and brought it back through her line and paying for it with the food stamps stating that his dog was going to eat better than she did now.

OK. Out of those of you who said dog food would be an option, who is going to volunteer to test their recommendations? I think an adequate test would be eating nothing but dry dog food until a 20lb bag is gone.

Any volunteers? You can even choose your own kibble.

No problem, if I can get the venison that your dogs are getting.

Wildman is a true survivor. Queueing up in the freezer is the road kill deer. At this time of year, we recycle too.

Yesterday, we came across some deer hunters who needed diesel for their generator. We helped them out and they gave us a hind quarter of venison as a thank-you!!!!

Guess what is for lunch today????

What time can you get here???