A Short History of Dog Food

Dogs lived, reproduced, and were extremely successful as a species for thousands of years before the advent of what we now call "dog food." Commercial dog food was first manufactured in the 1850's in England, as a biscuit-type food, based on cereals and meat. In 1885, the idea caught on in the United States. Astute grain-mill owners realized the huge profit potential in feeding the nation's dogs on the scraps of their industry. Their dog food was composed of milling by-products and floor sweepings with added meat-meal. Easy to package and to feed, these bone-shaped biscuits became popular. Soon, the Milk-Bone brand was born.

After World War I, canned horse meat was introduced by Ken-L-Ration. It was a profitable way to dispose of sick and dead horses and the surplus work horses being replaced by cars and tractors. By 1922, Ken-L-Ration was breeding and slaughtering an additional 50,000 horses per year, specifically for canned dog food. In 1931, Nabisco purchased Milk-Bone, as the profitability of prepared dog food was evident.

During World War II, tin was in short supply because of the war effort. The metal shortage nearly killed the canned dog food business and built a stronger niche for dry food. In 1942, Quaker Oats purchased Ken-L-Ration. In the 50's, extrusion – the process in which dry food is forcibly formed into little pellets and then treated with spray-on nutrients to replace those lost in processing – made the bulk processing of kibble more profitable. Dog food was officially big business.

In the 1970's a few companies introduced "premium" and "super-premium" lines of food. These foods were to be sold at specialty stores and through veterinary offices, implying their superiority to supermarket brands. These foods created a new profit center for veterinarians.

In the 1980's R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company purchased Nabisco. A few years later, in one of the largest leveraged buyouts on record, Phillip Morris Co. acquired Nabisco and then Nabisco merged with another of Phillip Morris' subsidiaries – Kraft Foods, International. There are other large players as well – Nestlé's, Mars, and Procter and Gamble are all owners of dog food brands.

Today's food systems are global, with ingredients purchased as far away as China or Chile to be shipped to Canada, made into kibble, packaged and sold in the U.S. In 2007 the largest pet food recall and one of the largest consumer product recalls on record ever, highlighted a few of the problems with this system. Wheat gluten knowingly contaminated with melamine (to artificially boost the nitrogen content – and hence the protein reading when tested) came from China and was included in foods made by a parent company called Menu Foods. Menu then distributed its product far and wide, where it was packaged under more than a hundred brand names, including ALPO, Costco, Fosters and Smith, Eukanuba, Iams, Mighty Dog, Natural Balance, and Nutro, to name a few. Unfortunately, the melamine caused acute and fatal kidney failure for many cats and some dogs. Many cat food brands were recalled, including Science Diet, which was exclusively sold in veterinary offices.

In the 1990's, Ian Billinghurst and Tom Lonsdale, veterinarians in Australia and England respectively, had been noticing the declining health of their animal patients. Dr. Billinghurst stated that the growth of degenerative diseases, including cancer, paralleled the growth of commercial dog food sales. Each of these doctors, tentatively at first, and then enthusiastically began to recommend "natural" diets to their clients. These natural diets consisted of the same foods that had been fed to dogs for millennia by their human companions – bones, meat, offal, and table scraps.

It's critical to understand that commercial dog food does not exist to make dogs healthy. Dog food manufacturers take useless waste from the human food industry (and don't get me started on that) to use and sell as dog food. Their primary concern is profit. For much more on this read Ann Martin's Foods Pets Die For, and Marion Nestlé's (no relation to the food company) Pet Food Politics.

Then, clean your cupboards of commercial, processed food and start eating real food, not too much, mostly plants for you and mostly meat and bones for your dogs.

Tomorrow: The Problems Caused by Processed Dog Foods