And who would know better than Dr Elizabeth Hodgkins!
http://www.freewebs.com/petfoodcampaign/hodgkinspetforum.htm...The quality of a company’s products is entirely a voluntary matter. In fact, the US government has recently recognized the industry as essentially “self-regulating.”
How Does the Pet Food Industry Regulate Itself?
If government is not regulating the pet food industry, who is? .... Through the efforts of the Pet Food Institute (PFI) and the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), vague ingredient definitions and a non-scientific set of nutrient content standards have been adopted and implemented across the entire industry. Because of this, it is almost impossible for the pet food purchaser to know from the astonishingly uniform labels that appear on all products just what is actually contained within the bags or cans on the store shelf.... Today, it is impossible for pet owners to read a label and tell which products are superior, or inferior, to others. This is a result of the deliberate “homogenizing” of pet food labels by the industry itself.
Because essentially all commercial pet foods carry meaningless AAFCO adequacy statements and ingredient definitions that deny the consumer real information about what is inside the package, the larger pet food companies have turned to other, less product-quality-focused methods to attract customers. Perhaps the most brilliant and successful of these have been the efforts of some manufacturers to enlist the veterinary profession to advocate and endorse specific products to their clients.... Unfortunately, the science that actually supports even the best pet foods is scant and flawed in design with biased results interpretation...
How Is It Possible For Pet Foods to Carry Unjustified Label Claims?
Naturally, pet owners find it hard to understand how this state of misleading, even fraudulent claims on pet foods can exist.
The answer is simple, lack of effective regulation from outside the industry and a failure of the industry to self-regulate. The blind trust of pet owners and veterinarians makes pet food highly profitable, and
without regulatory or market-driven incentive to invest in better quality assurance and scientific testing, no corporation is going to make that investment. It simply does not make business sense....
.... The standards for pet food claims of quality, safety and medical efficacy are unconscionably low because government has not demanded otherwise from an industry that has been regulating itself for 60 years!...
The pet food industry will argue that it is one of the most highly regulated industries there is. This is a statement of appearances only. There does appear to be a “cast of thousands” running around in tight circles regulating this industry. Between FDA (the Food and Drug Administration), AAFCO, and PFI, it does, indeed, seem that there are layers and layers of stringent regulation of pet food products.
What is not so apparent is the cooperative and collaborative relationship between these groups. All desire the same thing; peace among the parties, profitability for the companies, and tax revenues for the government...