If you look at our ingredient labels, we list the cuts of meat and usually the location from where the meat came from. This is unique in the pet food industry. Every company I know of only lists the type of protein, e.g., turkey. There maybe companies that list the cut, but I’m just not aware of them. If you know of one that does, good for them.

There’s a reason for that. Most pet food companies use ingredients rejected for human consumption. That means even if you’re buying most raw and freeze dried foods, regardless of the price, they’re using meat that’s ‘fallen’ on the cutting room floor — meat damaged from processing machines, contaminated (pathogen, fecal, inedible eg tumors), cannot be used for human food (eg stomach, ears, and other parts), and rejected due to other factory causes.

If you’re buying canned or dry (kibble) pet food, which is most pet owners, it probably involves a rendering factory. This is the worst of the worst. No matter how much you pay. Paying more doesn’t mean you’re receiving human-quality ingredients, no matter what you think. I’ve been told by pet owners they can see the chunks of meat in their pet’s kibble or canned, getting comments like ‘it’s as good as what you sell’. Well, it’s not. In fact, what they’re buying shouldn’t even be called meat. It’s no wonder there are so many health issues that are almost immediately reversed when moving to our fresh, whole food diet.

When other pet food ingredient labels list the word “turkey” – not only could it be any part of the bird, it could be USDA inspected and passed turkey thigh (like in human food, what we use) OR it could be condemned turkey meat, turkey bones with no meat, condemned turkey bones, turkey skin with no meat, turkey feet, turkey feathers, condemned turkey skin or a long list of other possibilities.

I don’t want to get off on a rant about the poor quality of the food being marketed and sold to us and the significant impact it has on the health of our pets. While easy for me to express my disgust for what’s allowed to happen in the pet food industry, I want to focus about the healthy alternative.

Feeding fresh, whole meats/ingredients that comes from the human food chain (USDA approved and passed) makes all the difference. It really does. When you use whole cuts of human approved meats there are all kinds of benefits.

Pathogens (harmful bacteria) don’t exist or are virtually nonexistent in human foods. That means the food is exceptionally clean, processed to avoid and prevent contamination.

Once a food is rejected, the care and quality controls stop. Often the rejection is because of some type of contamination. This is when bacteria growth explodes and to be fed as a raw product requires additional processing to remove/kill the harmful bacteria, resulting in killing ALL of the bacteria, including the good kind (think probiotics). As a side note, bacteria like e coli are everywhere, including our and our pet’s stomachs (microbiome). There are thousands of different strains of e coli, but only a few are harmful.

Using whole human-grade ingredients allows us to offer products like Custom Meals with Chunks/Chunky texture, whole strips of jerky (not formed shapes from fragments), and BITES. Only the best quality meats can be used for products like that. Fresh, whole, and beautiful. That’s why we’re the only ones making whole products like bites, chunks, and whole jerky, because of the exceptional quality of all our ingredients. And why we can list the actual cut of meat we use in the ingredients. Because of our supplier vetting process, we can list the location of where the ingredient came from also.

We regularly receive emails from customers that tell us how switching to our diet has changed the lives of their animals for the better. Vets are impressed with the health turn-around they see in their Fetching Foods fed patients. Your milage may vary depending on what’s going on with your animal, but know that diet is more than getting the right amounts of the necessary vitamins and minerals. Otherwise we could all take a multi-vitamin and live off of cupcakes and slimjims. The quality of the food you eat is vitally important to having a diet that results in maximum health.

A good diet fosters health, preventing many diseases. A poor diet will cultivate poor heath, inviting diseases to create a foothold, eventually requiring a cure. It’s a matter of what approach you prefer, prevention vs cure.