How about your treat your dog to a tasty and healthy Thanksgiving treat?

This easy to make turkey loaf will have your mutt giving thanks any time of the year!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb or 450g of left over turkey meat
• 1 cup of cooked brown rice
• 1/4 cup grated carrot
• 1/2 cup low sodium chicken stock
• 3 tablespoons or 20g of chopped parsley

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 F or 120 C
Finely chop the cold turkey and mix all ingredients together well in a bowl.
Fill a loaf tin with the mixture lightly press the mixture into the tin.
Bake the loaf for 45 minutes

Let it cool, cut into bite-sized pieces and store in fridge!

Wysong notified distributors and retailers to stop selling food with three more lot numbers: Maintenance 090817, Senior 090811 and Synorgon 090629. Those three lots join five others recalled earlier in the month: Maintenance 090617, 090624, 090706, and 090720 and Senior 090623.

From what can be determined, the problem with the Wysong foods stems from unusually high heat and humidity on those summer dates. This combined with a malfunctioning moisture checking device is believed to be the cause of the higher moisture and this isolated problem.

All Wysong foods have been tested for mycotoxins and are negative. That is the primary danger in consuming moldy foods. If your pet has consumed the product, the most that could be expected would be loose stool, and this should clear upon changing from these lot numbers.

Since most of these animals do not eat plastic, a natural question arises as to how the hell did melamine get into the food chain?

There are two answers to this question.

The first reason is that during the late 1950s, melamine was identified as a potential source of non-protein based nitrogen for cattle. What you may not know is that protein contains huge amounts of nitrogen and that cattle are herbivorous, therefore, alternate sources of nitrogen have always been sought for cattle and other herbivorous animals. It was only in 1978 that scientific studies revealed that melamine was a potentially dangerous substance for consumption. By that time, melamine had already been used as a source of nitrogen and consumed by cattle and other animals. The beef, milk and other edible products all introduced melamine into the food chain.

Another reason for melamine usage in food products, especially those for dogs and cats is the fact that two of the most common tests for checking the nitrogen content and the overall quality standards of processed food, fail to detect melamine. Kjedahl and Dumas are the names of these two tests and manufacturers have been known to introduce melamine into their processed food illegally to get the nitrogen levels and therefore the supposed protein levels, to the desired value. Melamine is the cheapest source of nitrogen and can easily mix with processed food items.

This practice is wide-spread in places such as China as evidenced by the widespread recalls over the past couple of years of everything from baby milk to pet foods.

While the Kjedahl method is known for its portability and ease of operation, it is not a very accurate method to account for protein content. The synthesis of food items being tested by this method often skips the non-protein nitrogen content, which means that chemicals such as melamine go unnoticed. Some additions are being made to this method to ensure that the true protein content is estimated and also to check the content of possible toxic methods. The new method being developed is called the New Kjedahl method, and is under testing.

The Dumas test is also based on the same principle concept as the Kjedahl method- estimation of protein based on the quantity of nitrogen content and therefore, this method also fails to detect the use of non-nitrogen protein content, and thus melamine content in the food.

To protect yourself and your pets make sure you buy products that are manufactured under strict controls or even better, make them yourself!

PRODUCT THAT MADE IT TO SELECT PETSMART STORES IN CA, AZ, CO, TX and NM ONLY

PRODUCT THAT MADE IT TO SELECT PETCO STORES IN CA, NV, HI and UT ONLY

Recall-tainted Menu Foods’ destruction of a huge amount of evidence is having a potentially devastating impact on at least two ongoing court cases.

Check out the rest of the story over at consumeraffairs.com. This is a huge blow to those still in litigation with Menu Foods.

If you decide to put your dog on a veggie diet, it is a good idea to consult your vet first. They will be able to give you advice and perhaps some healthy, balanced recipes for his meals, as well as be able to tell you if he is currently healthy enough to make the change.

If you are unsure of quite what to put into his food to begin with, you can actually purchase readymade vegetarian dog foods from some pet stores or health food stores. This will give you an idea as well as provide him with food while you learn about and figure out the recipes of the meals you wish to make for him.

The key is to remember that your dog still needs the right balance of nutrients and vitamins and minerals in his food, as he otherwise would, therefore you will need to learn the sources of the nutrition. Protein can be found in eggs and milk products, starches in potatoes and pasta or rice, fats can be found in a small amount of vegetable oil that you might add or even a small amount of cheese, certain vegetables hold other minerals they need, such as dark green veggies contain iron. You can feed any amount of vegetables that your dog will eat, since they do not have much in the way of fats, sugars or starch, so they are very healthy for your dog. It might not always be possible to create a meal that is exactly the right balance of nutrition, so you might want to supplement them with protein supplements, which can be mixed with their food easily. Be sure to find out whether anything might be potentially toxic for your dog, such as nuts – there are certain nuts that a dog cannot eat.

It can take some practice to get the right balance in homemade food for your dog, therefore some owners like to work alongside their vet or animal nutritionist when making specific meals for their dog. Others may choose to stick to buying readymade veggie foods. These have been made by professionals to concoct the correct mixture of foods that a dog needs and so an owner can feel satisfied that their dog will be healthy while eating it.

It is really down to personal choice of the owner whether they want to put their dog on a vegetarian diet. A dog can get along quite happily on either a carnivorous or herbivorous diet.

“A judge preemptively nixed a class action against Wal-Mart and dog food manufacturer Menu Foods, among others, ruling that the need for individual factual inquiries made a class action untenable.”

Bad news for those involved. There was hope that a suit such as this might be the spark required to tighten up the labelling laws for pet foods.

These people, who claim they did nothing wrong, need to stand trial. A plea agreement is a disservice to all those who suffered due to the contamination.

Read more about the continuation here.

A SHANGHAI dealer has issued an emergency recall of a batch of Optima dry dog food with a production date between August and September last year.

Some dogs eating “Optima Puppy Lamb and Rice Dry Dog Food” have been poisoned by aflatoxin – a naturally occurring toxic chemical that comes from a fungus found on corn and other grains.

“Three dogs have been confirmed dead, and they all ate the batch of Optima food,” said the Shanghai Naughty Family Pet Co, a pet clinic on Hongqiao Road. These dogs were fussy about their food, had diarrhea and vomited, all symptoms of aflatoxin exposure, staff said.

More here