Family Farmed Pet Food... Really?

FAMILY FARMED PET FOOD...REALLY?

Many ancient cultures regard their farmers as "living Libraries".   They continue to cultivate a respect for the traditions associated with bringing forth life from the soil and the vast knowledge required to do so.  Under the ever changing and innumerable conditions of weather, soil, saved seed quality etc., farmers hold the centuries old knowledge of timing, flexibility, and ingenuity which few professions can compare.  They are the keepers of the field of applied and practical survival.

In contrast modern society has chemically swept away sustainability and centuries of applied knowledge, leaving in its wake an ever increasing curve of top soil loss, erosion, and desertification.  We have forced and encouraged our farmers to replace the care of local peoples with commodities and cash accumulation.  A "let them eat Cake" approach to nutrition, ignoring cellular health, replacing it with Franken-foods diet devoid of micronutrients but with plenty of GMO's.  In so doing, we are cultivating the failing health of our people.    And as we push our farmers further down the road of destruction (for who can eat cash?  It has little nutritional value after all...) we see failed farms financially, failed communities socially and failed health for us all.  For what?  Cheaper....as our lives become cheaper we must ask..who will make a living wage in this decline and what in the end will have any real value? 

Cattle in feedlot

It is commodities markets that largely decide the farming fate of the nation, not cost of production. We are cultivating cheap GMO based infertile seed that can produce nothing wholesome, not even reproduce itself.  Infertile, sterile, and financially unviable.  Fat cats making cash, not sensible, long term planning that creates a real Homeland security in knowing we will all be able to eat from the soils we inhabit.  Taking from the bank of the soil we give back nothing and demand more, cheaper, faster and tastier than ever!  Armed with chemical weapons stock piled from the ongoing wars today's "modern" farmer makes war on all that is healthy.  Spray it and it will grow....for a little while anyway.  Then what when the soil surrenders?

There is no backtracking on quality in life.  Health is happiness and cannot be bought back no matter the price.   No price we could pay would also buy back the dignity of a nation whose priorities are focused on the unsustainable and non life giving technologies we embrace,  while heaping scorn upon those who keep us alive.  Modern media is ripe with sarcastic images of the hillbilly farmer, absent of knowledge, replete with scorned local swagger.   Ignorant, uncouth, and unsophisticated?  Not today's family farmer.

Pasture fed cattle on a family farm

Hip, holistic, and remembering the knowledge that kept us all alive for centuries beyond count many farmers are recapturing the wealth of fertility, sustained and viable.  They farm the soil!  So finally...PET FOOD?  Yes.  Clean healthy and whole. Provide economic support for those who do right, protect our fertility (the community's true bank of resources) and maintain a form of true survival.  Apart from the health giving properties of real food farmed from healthy environments there are huge social and financial repercussions to supporting good wholesome farms.  Pets are what they eat just like the rest of us!  We breathe the same polluted air and drink the same compromised waters.  Buying family farmed pet foods supports clean environments, local economies of livable wages and creates a circle of health that goes well beyond the obvious.

Put your money where your mouth is!  Support clean environments as health = wealth!

Food Quality: A Complex Matter

FOOD QUALITY:  A Complex Matter

When it comes to food quality matters!  The old saying comes to mind...."You are what you eat!"  It is more true today than ever.  Unfortunately today food quality is too often measured by factors that don't tell the true story.  As in our own lives, Pet Parents often judge a pet food by its palatability. In terms of quality taste has become the primary factor in deciding what to feed ourselves and our pets.  With many Americans the fast food syndrome is in full effect, so too in the pet food world.  We decide on foods that replace nutrition with the magic combination of fat, salt and sugar....foods that make us feel too full yet increase craving and appetite leaving us with a feeling of "not being fed".  We thus create a barrage of health troubles and over all poor health.  As a Pet Parent we hate to see our pets unhappy....even more we should be concerned with the health that brings real happiness, not a quick sugar fix!

Yes, it is important that a pet readily eat the food you present, "Waste not want not!"  But processed foods that are enhanced with undisclosed flavors encourage over eating and are of questionable value, if not toxic.   In the days of misleading labeling laws one should pay particular attention to more than the calorie count.  Fats, carbohydrates and proteins are not interchangeable and one does not equal the quality of another!  One example would be protein of one animal versus another, they do not act the same in feeding a body.  Another example would be the farming of the same animal used for protein... old layer hens fed arsenic for parasites and cement for shells may have the same protein numbers as the clean farmed, hormone free,  free range but not the same health value or quality of protein.  Numbers can be very misleading in the abstract.   If a label reads like a high school science experiment one can safely say it is not food; leave it on the shelf!  Ingredients should be whole foods based as nature intended!  Parts of ingredients are not advisable, by products of any kind should be shunned.  Many ingredients are from industrial waste, particularly the sugar industry and are not digested well by anyone.  For instance, Beet Pulp is the left-overs from the chemical extrusion of sugar from GMO beets to produce the white sugar common in super markets today.  Many corn solids and glutens are from the left-overs of creating the high fructose corn syrup used by the candy companies (who incidentally own many of the major label commercial brands of pet food sold in chain stores).  Not only full of sugars, genetically modified and indigestible, these inferior ingredients do damage to the body and degrade health like any over processed, nutrient devoid filler.  Animal By products, specific to a species or not, are to be avoided at all times.  These are parts of the animal not fit for human consumption.  Generic terms like "animal fat" has a broad and rather disturbing meaning, and chicken "by products" means the inedible parts like feathers and beaks.

Poor quality ingredients have no place in health.  Consumers should get what they pay for in human or pet food, meaning healthy meats and clean whole foods.  Huge industrial agriculture dumping grounds?  Not my pet!  Nor myself.   Consumers fair much better dollar for dollar, pound for pound by supporting the smaller family farmed, family owned pet food companies who support humane farming and sustainable agriculture; who invest in clean eco systems and put their money in the quality of their foods instead of heavy advertising.  In short, local economies responding to local needs and caring about the place where they live.  We all pay a price for toxic farming....eating toxic food heals no one.  Cats and dogs are carnivores no matter what advertising campaigns may say and they eat meat.  Over fibrous carbohydrate / sugar based fillers (corn, glutens, beet pulps, cellulose ie. saw dust) have no place in pet food.  The cleaner the food the healthier the animal!  I have found the words of Mahatma Gandhi to ring truer today than ever...."There is no disease accept malnutrition."  It is the QUALITY of what we eat that matters most.  Our local economies, health of the soils that produce our foods, and therefore the health of us all are huge issues of quality in life.  The vast definitions that this term encompasses cannot be ignored without paying the highest price of all.  Bring home true quality in food... and your pets, and even your family will thank you.  A community's wealth is in its health.  Quality of life = quality of food!