Dr. Conor Brady explains why pet food labels hide crucial information. Manufacturers don't list carbohydrates, sugar, or salt content, and terms like "prescription diet" are unregulated marketing. Companies sell supplements to fix their own incomplete foods, yet resist the transparency modern technology makes simple.
Pet food labeling. Pet food product labels must legally include certain details. And I thought, certain details, that's a key bit because they leave out a hell of a lot of information. They don't write carbohydrates or sugars on the label. Why wouldn't we? Why shouldn't we know that? Why shouldn't we know the salt content of the food? To give them their due, in the very next paragraph, something good happens from the BVA. They say another example of some of the confusing terminology, confusing terminology is the prescription or therapeutic diet. No prescription is required to obtain them, and they cannot legally claim to treat or prevent disease. These terms are misleading and should not be used.
It's really— there is— it's a really poor level of requirements on the label. And in this day and age, when you can link quite easily through to far more detailed information about what's in the food, how help your pet nutritionist, help you if you're feeding your own pet with understanding and not, you know, to highlight the issues, the downsides to just formulating and making assumptions that the formulator has got it right for the ingredients you're using. Yeah, I can't stress this enough, the amount of work that I've put into looking at matching formulation to actually output and understanding the seasonal variation and what can impact that. And then, you know, seeing companies that are willing to say, oh, we get over the line by just using natural ingredients. No, using farmed ingredients actually is what you mean. And also, I know that you're using a formulator. You have not checked that food to know that there is exactly what there should be. Not just getting over the line as a minimum, but actually optimizing health with nutrition. There is a universe of difference between those two. And, you know, a great friend of ours gave a great speech back in Barcelona about why not just kibble foods, but even some raw food companies out there are not really engaging with saying we're food testing and we can release to you the nutrient values of our food. And that it, yes, it varies seasonally, but we will maintain you in a healthy optimum. You know, I think that's really what we should be asking for this day and age. You know, we want, we want people or at least to accept that, look, if you've got variance, that where is that variance so that there are people who want to reach for a supplement to optimize nutrition. I mean, some of these companies also make me smile because they sell supplements to optimize their food. Well, if they were truly giving a healthy excess of nutrients within that raw diet, why are they selling supplements? They shouldn't need to.
