Pet food companies that do animal research

[HappyJoy]

I was wondering what people's thoughts were about dog food companies that do animal testing, or if anyone has any good information on it. I was unpleasently suprised to find how widespread it was, and how needlessly cruel they often are. After reading about one particulally gruesome and needless experiment I refuse to buy any Iams (or Eukanuba) products. I've heard mixed views about it, because some good dog foods for dogs with special needs do come out of it, and i've heard from some people who hate certain companies for the tests they do, but have to buy the food because it is the ONLY that their dogs can eat safely. I hate that companies that claim to advocate humane treatment of animals would be so callous just to make a buck. I was just wondering what other peoples thoughts were...

[rottiegirl]

I don't have a lot of problems with animal testing. If you take animal science, vet tech, or any other vet courses animal testing comes with the territory, you also learn that pain is involved with very few of the experiments. There are also strict codes that researches and lab animal caretakers must follow, the animals are well cared for.
How would I know the dog food was good and safe for my dogs, and they would like it if dogs before them hadn't eaten it?

[Dobified]

I have issues with it. That is one of the major reason I feed a holistic natural raw diet. Food for human consumption is what our dog eat.


Most of the test they perform on this poor animals are useless.

Read this : Taken from here >> http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/petfood2.html

There is more of this kind of research documented all ove the place and the pet food companies do not deny any of it.



RESEARCH BY CORPORATIONS AND UNIVERSITIES

Having spent over 13 years researching this industry, I thought I was aware of all aspects as they relate to the ingredients used in pet foods. I was wrong!

In early January 2002, I received a letter from a student at the University of Illinois, asking if I could make some suggestions as to what they could do about nine dogs that were housed in a windowless lab at the university. These dogs had cannulas (tubes) surgically implanted in their sides so that samples of digested food could be taken. The studies included feeding the dogs raw and rendered animal by-products including "poultry necks and backs and viscera, and ground-up poultry feathers". Until 2002, this research was funded by the Iams company, but now is being funded by the soybean industry and the US Department of Agriculture.

Over the years I've been aware of dogs and cats being used for research - research into human medicine, a practice of which I don't approve - but I'd never realised that an industry that claimed to care about the welfare of pets would undertake such barbaric practices. I was soon to learn that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Iams had been notorious for carrying on such experimentation.

Two animal rights organisations - In Defense of Animals, based in the United States, and Uncaged, based in the United Kingdom - outlined some of the animal experiments. Iams claimed that it used these studies to support its nutritional claims, which it uses to market its products.

Iams experimentation conducted on dogs and cats included the following:

1. Twenty-eight cats' bellies were cut to see the effect of feeding the cats fibre; then the cats were killed (University of Nebraska and the Iams Company; Bueno, A.R., et al., Nutrition Research, vol. 20, no. 9, pp. 1319-1328, 2000).

2. Twenty-four young dogs were intentionally put into kidney failure, subjected to invasive experimentation, then killed (University of Georgia and the Iams Company; White, J.V. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 52, no. 8, pp. 1357-1365, 1991).

3. The kidneys of 31 dogs were removed to increase the risk of kidney disease, then the dogs were killed and their kidneys dissected (University of Georgia and the Iams Company; Finco, D.R. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 1282-1290, 1994).

4. Bones in the front and back legs of 18 dogs were cut out and stressed until they broke, to show the effect of diet (University of Wisconsin and the Iams Company; Crenshaw, T.D. et al., Proceedings of 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium).

5. Ten dogs were killed to study the effect of fibre in diets (Mississippi State University and the Iams Company; Buddington, R.K. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 354-358, 1999).

6. Eighteen male puppies' kidneys were chemically damaged; the puppies were fed experimental diets, tubes were inserted into their penises; then the puppies were killed (Colorado State University and the Iams Company; Grauer, G.F. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. 948-956, 1996).

7. Twenty-eight cats were surgically forced into kidney failure and either died during the experiment or were killed to study the effects of protein (University of Georgia and the Iams Company, Proceedings of the 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium).

8. Fifteen dogs' bellies were cut open and tubes were attached to the dogs' intestines, the contents of which were pumped out every 10 minutes for two hours; then the dogs were killed (University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Iams Company; Hallman, J.E. et al., Nutrition Research, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 303-313, 1996).

9. Sixteen dogs' bellies were cut open and parts of the dogs' intestines were taken (University of Alberta and the Iams Company, Journal of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences, 1998).

10. Healthy puppies, chicks and rats had bone and cartilage removed to study bone and joint development (Purdue University and the Iams Company, Proceedings of the 2000 Iams Nutrition Symposium).

11. Invasive procedures were used to study bacteria in 16 dogs' intestines (Texas A&M University and the Iams Company; Willard MD, et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 55, no. 5, May 1994).

12. Twenty-four cats had their female organs and parts of their livers removed; they were made obese, then were starved (University of Kentucky and the Iams Company; Ibrahim, W.H. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 61, no. 5, May 2000).

13. Fifty-six dogs had their female organs removed to study beta carotene (Washington State University and the Iams Company; Weng, B.C. et al., Journal of Animal Science, vol. 78, pp. 1284-1290, 2000).

14. Sixteen dogs' bellies were repeatedly cut to take parts of the intestines (Texas A&M and the Iams Company; Willard, M.D. et al., Journal of the Veterinary Medical Association, vol. 8, pp. 1201-1206, 1994).

15. Six dogs had tubes implanted into their intestines and fluid drained repeatedly to study cereal flours (University of Illinois and the Iams Company, Murray, S.M. et al., Journal of Animal Science, vol. 77, pp. 2180-2186, 1999).

16. Thirty dogs were intentionally wounded and patches of skin containing the wounds removed to study diet and the effect of various ingredients on wound healing (Auburn University and the Iams Company; Mooney, M.A. et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 859-863, 1998).

17. Five dogs' bellies were cut open and tubes inserted into their intestines to study the effect of fibre (University of Illinois and the Iams Company, Muir, H.E. et al., Journal of Animal Science, vol. 74, pp. 1641-1648, 1996).

18. Parts of the large intestines of 28 dogs were removed to study the effects of fibre (University of Missouri and the Iams Company; Howard, M.D. et al., Journal of Animal Science, vol. 75, suppl. 1, pp. 136, 1997).

19. Parts of the intestines and immune system of 16 dogs were cut out to study the effects of fibre (University of Alberta and the Iams Company, Proceedings of the 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium).

20. Five dogs had tissue from large and small intestines removed to study intestinal tract needs (University of Illinois and the Iams Company, Proceedings of the 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium).

Procter & Gamble (P&G) purchased Iams in September 1999 and issued a code of ethics. Animal People, an on-line organisation devoted to the health and welfare of pets, reported in June 2001 that P&G stated its intention to phase out animal testing as quickly as alternatives could be developed and approved by regulators.

In 2002, an investigator from PETA infiltrated one of the Iams labs in the US. What was found was a horrifying situation where dogs and cats were confined to small cages for up to six years. Dogs had their vocal cords removed so they could not bark. The animals suffered with severe heat in the summer and freezing temperatures in the winter. Videotapes showed researchers dumping dogs on concrete floors after having huge chunks of muscle cut out of their thighs. The cruelty continued. Cats were confined in cinder-block rooms with wooden boards, nails sticking out of them, as resting places. The PETA investigator watched as one of these boards fell on a cat, killing the animal.

Be assured that Iams is not the only company involved in such cruel research. Ralston Purina, prior to its acquisition by Nestlé, Hill's Pet Nutrition, owned by Colgate-Palmolive, Pedigree Pet Foods, owned by Mars, and Alpo Pet Foods, prior to its acquisition of Nestlé, are just a few of the companies involved in animal experimentation.

[GSR Trucker]

I have a huge problem with it. The practice is viscious, barbarric, and out dated!

I will not knowingly feed any foods which were lab tested on dogs.

I have gone deep into this subject on past threads and I will refrain from doing so again, because the result will be me getting myself all torqued out of shape.

[rottiegirl]

Dobie, I do not think all animal research is acceptable, however I also have a few arguments for you: in numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 all animals were pound seizures, meaning the animals were to be put to sleep.

Number 12 is rediculous, the cats had spay surguries, and as many of us know plenty of pets and people live comfortably with only a portion of a liver. They were not starved to death, this was an experiemtn trying to create a low-diet cat food for obese pets, to help prevent obesity after spaying.

13, also spay surguries, do we as pet owners now have problems with spaying?

7, and 14, were both done well the dog was under anetstetic, it's not like they were awake, As a kid my Rottweiler liked to eat rocks, we had a portion of his intestine romoved after it became impacted. Am I a terrible dog owner?

Sometimes you have to see both sides of the coin!

[Dobified]

Thanks Rottie, I think I will agree to disgaree. I realize that some animal testing needs to be done, for human medicines and for researching human diseases.

As for pound animals, that really hits a sore spot. I know of a little girl who lost her dog that way. The city pound here had let the research people take the dog too soon, the family was desperately searching for their dog, had called the Humane society and all over , took out ads, they even phoned the pound to ask if their dog was there. To be told that there was a dog there fit the description but was sent to the University. The tired to get the dog back but the dog was KILLED before they could. This was an older dog they had had for many years.

Any kind of testing on dogs and cats for the specific reason of making dog food is terribly wrong and extermely cruel. Never will I feed commercial pet foods to my dogs.

It doesn't matter to me if they are spayed, nuetered or whatever if it is for the simple fact of finding out if a specific dog food will do a specific thing, I am sorry but I have issues with it. There really is no need.


All the points made there are documented and did happen. The journals are listed there with page numbers and case number to prove they are real and did actually happen. Every point in the article is documented as real.

This is how I feel, I know others can feel different about it. That is ok, my opinions still stand but I respect the fact that not everyone has the same mindset.

[rottiegirl]

Yup, I think that's a good way to call, it, and to be honest with you, I'm not too fond of pound seizures either...

In the end with animal testing I think if it's completly unessasary (Think back to Pavlov, remember him? The ringing bells and drooling? Well he got a Noble prize for proving that you can produce an artificial insanity in dogs by torturing them) but I also think to myself if this product has never been tested on another dog do I want mine to be the first to try it? Or if this surgical procedure has only been tested on computer models do I really want it performed on my dogs?

[Yaj]

Terrible!The ends do not justify the means.We humans can really stoop low!
Yaj.

[Yaj]

Originally Posted by rottiegirl

Yup, I think that's a good way to call, it, and to be honest with you, I'm not too fond of pound seizures either...

Or if this surgical procedure has only been tested on computer models do I really want it performed on my dogs?

I would rather the procedure be tried on a dog which requires it rather than on healthy dogs where the condition is artificially induced.
Yaj.

[Deidre]

GOOD on you Dobified. I have discussed this issue on one other forum before and was met with offensive remarks from other posters and even received a pm to stop discussing the Iams/Eukanuba issue (their barbaric tests) because they found it offensive!! I agree entirely and would never feed my dogs such foods besides which I don't believe in all the claims and I have read the nexus article amongst others and am not going to place my pets at the mercy of all the pet food manufacturers!! Most contain noxious and cancer causing preservatives such as BHA, BHT and ETHOXIQUIN. Feeding the BARF way is the best and cheapest way and my dogs thoroughly enjoy it.

Thanks for bringing this to other people's attention.