Pet owners, worried about the health and safety of the food you’ve been feeding your cat or dog? Here’s a quick addition to the information links given in my earlier post on the tainted pet food recall…

Check out the new Pet Food List of manufacturers who have made public statements that their products are not affected by the recent Menu Foods recall.

The list is intended as a starting point for your own research – it is a list we are compiling of pet foods deemed safe by the pet food companies themselves. It is neither an endorsement of any pet foods listed, nor is it a complete list of all pet foods not on the recall list. And, even though a brand is listed, we cannot guarantee the food is safe. The pet food companies are the only ones who can make that statement.

Pet owners are reminded to take nothing for granted — keep checking for updated information and any new product recalls.

What can a pet owner trust?

Every time you turn around, another brand or type of pet food is added to the FDA’s recall list of products that are linked to kidney failure in dogs and cats, and the FDA is not as quick as we’d like it to be with updating its official pet food recall list.

When all this first started, two weeks ago, only wet foods (in cans and pouches) made by Menu Foods were involved. These were sold under various well-known brand names including Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Nutro, and Mighty Dog… and this week, Alpo canned food was added to the list.

Up to that point, it was just wet food — and those of us who feed dry food to our pets were feeling fairly secure that we were not poisoning our beloved companion animals…

Then, on Friday, Hill’s Pet Nutrition voluntarily recalled one of its dry cat foods, Prescription Diet m/d Feline Dry Food. Now that one was a shocker, because it’s a food sold by veterinarians — the very people to whom pet owners were turning in hopes of finding a safe food for their furry companions.

Yesterday, Del Monte recalled “select product codes of its pet treat products sold under the Jerky Treats®, Gravy Train® Beef Sticks and Pounce Meaty Morsels® brands as well as select dog snack and wet dog food products sold under private label brands.”

The Company took this voluntary recall action immediately after learning this morning from the FDA that wheat gluten supplied to Del Monte Pet Products from a specific manufacturing facility in China contained melamine. Melamine is a substance not approved for use in food. The FDA made this finding as part of its ongoing investigation into the recent pet food recall.

The full list of recalled products is given in a Del Monte press release.

These days, my feed reader is tuned to PetConnection.com, a great source of information on the tainted pet food issue, and Pet Food Tracker for the most up-to-date information on current pet food recalls.

If you have one of these products, do not feed it to your pet. Save the product, along with receipts and veterinary records. The companies involved have pledged to take responsibility for the recall, although what that means financially cannot be determined at this time.

The common thread — the tainted ingredient in these cases — seems to be wheat gluten from China, where environmental and safety standards are not what they are in North America and Europe.

Older dogs and dogs with delicate digestive systems (like many ex-racer greyhounds) don’t always tolerate grain products well anyway. Wheat, corn, soy, and so forth tend to be included in dog foods as filler, not a source of nutrition that the dog’s body can use, so I have always tended to stay away from food with those ingredients anyway.

In recent years, I’ve been feeding my dogs either Canidae or Canine Plus Wholesome Blend dog food. Both made with “human grade” ingredients… no wheat, from China or anywhere else… so I’m as confident at this point as it’s possible to be… I guess… but still checking that recall list (obsessively!) every morning, right before I feed the pets.

Practical and elegant, the Classic Diner dog food stations from QT Dog are made from hand-forged iron and powder-coated in a choice of durable finishes to suit Fido’s personal style: black, hammered silver, or the very trendy hammered copper.

Alternately, for those who prefer a less ornate design, there’s the Wrought Iron Dog Bone Diner from barker & meowsky on Amazon. It’s equally attractive, with those gently curved legs and a cute bone design on the front, and would look extra-great in either a mod-urban or a retro style kitchen.

Many dog owners prefer to give a dog his food and water in a raised bowl (and I’m one of them) because it may help to prevent bloat in those deep-chested dog breeds who are at higher risk of developing Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus (GDV).

So when a raised feeding station can improve a dog’s digestion and look pretty too… that’s just a bonus!a

My friend Kyle emailed me today with the subject line “oh yeah, here’s a brilliant invention” — maybe just a touch of sarcasm there? He’d found the Brake-Fast dog food bowl on a website that lists weird new products, I guess, and thought it was hilarious.

But Kyle’s never owned a dog.

And if you’re a dog owner, and especially the owner of a large or giant breed with a deep narrow chest, — like Great Danes or Dobermans or Greyhounds or German Shepherds, etc. — you’ll know that a greedy big dog can be at real risk of Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus (GDV) or Bloat that can be fatal to your dog.

Well, this Brake-Fast dog food bowl is designed to help prevent that dangerous risk of bloat, by slowing down the speed at which your gobbling chow-hound can hoover up his dinner — he’s got to work around those built-in obstructions to get at his food.

It makes good sense — For years now, many knowledgeable dog-owners have been putting a couple of hefty rocks in their dog’s food bowls, or a length of heavy chain, to accomplish the same purpose. But that’s inconvenient and unattractive, and very very loud when Fido goes banging his dish about to clean up the last few morsels of dinner… unlike this pretty blue bowl.

As I told Kyle — far from being a joke-product to chuckle over in inter-office emails, I actually think this is a very sensible dog-food dish — and sure wish I’d come up with the idea for it first!

Empty plastic pails are very likely to be “free for the picking-up” from your local bakery. We arrange to get some of these whenever we need a large food-safe plastic bucket. The ones we get are 30-lb buckets with tight-fitting lids. They happen to be from molasses but they also get shortening and corn syrup and other things in these big pails, so there’s generally no shortage of them.

We keep the senior dog food in one and the puppy food in another, bird seed in another one, and so on. And when we find a really good buy on bulk foods, these pails make great back-of-the-pantry air-tight storage for supplies like powdered milk or flour.

Another couple of the plastic pails are used for storage of holiday decorations. Now we can store our seasonal ornaments and wrapping paper, etc., down in our old unfinished cellar without worrying about mice or insects or water damage.

Because these buckets have a sturdy handle and are quite easy to carry around, I use one in the garden to collect weeds and prunings. Turned upside-down, it makes a dandy garden seat for a little rest between chores, too!

The bakery is happy to give their empty plastic pails away at the end of the week, because otherwise they would just have to throw them out. Since they have to pay to have their dumpster of trash taken away for disposal, they’re happy not to do that. So, getting our storage pails for free is good for the neighbourhood small business owner and good for the environment (keeping waste out of the landfill), as well as good for us!