Animal groups want to see stricter ingredient standards and labels on pet food. Kathy Guillermo, Senior Vice President at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said, “Pet food should be prohibited from having ingredients taken from 4D bins. This is the term that refers to where they place the bodies of animals that are dead, dying, and diseased.” According to Guillermo, animal tissues that are not for human consumption are placed in 4D bins.
PETA also wants the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to force manufacturers to issues product recalls if a product has caused illness or death in animals. Currently the FDA can request or order that a product is removed from the market. The FDA is updating their regulations by September 2015 due to a legislation from 2007 requiring updated nutritional and ingredient information. Guillermo said, “We know the wheels of the government turn very slowly and when animals are involved even slower, but it’s unfortunate it has taken since 2007 to get this rolling. I think it has been mostly left to the industry to decide what is adequate and what is proper and that’s why this is a good idea to have a federal regulation to make sure it’s consistent across the board.”
Pet food producers are concerned that the new regulations will be too similar to the nutritional information required for human food. The Pet Food Institute (PFI) represents 98% of dog and cat food manufacturers in the United States. PFI supports FDA labeling standards provided the standards are not modeled after human food labels. President and CEO of PFI, Cathleen Enright said, “Currently if you look on packages for human food there’s a serving size, but that doesn’t translate when you are talking about a dog.” Human food also requires the protein/fat/vitamin contents be listed as a percentage of daily requirements whereas pet food labels require maximum and minimum percentages. There is concern that if pet food labels are too similar to human food labels consumers will become confused because people and pets have different nutritional requirements.
Chair of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) Pet Food Committee, Stan Cook believes that national labeling regulations could be positive (pet food regulations are currently decided by each State). Cook also said, “Some consumers want pet food labels to more closely resemble human food labels. Many in the regulatory arena are concerned that making the labels appear the same as a human food label is a food safety issue.”
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