Wendy Knowler | http://www.iol.co.za/
May 26 2008 at 08:50AM
A year ago, the global pet food industry was thrown into crisis by the "melamine scandal" - many brands of packaged food were found to contain the industrial chemical, which caused the deaths of thousands of pets, mainly in the US and Canada, as well as 19 in South Africa.
So did South Africans suffer a crisis of confidence in packaged pet food? Apparently not.
A year on, it's business as usual.
"In fact, the industry has grown almost two percent in volume in the past year," says Barry Hundley, executive director of Pet Food Industry Association of Southern Africa (PFI).
"I think the upfront way in which the industry responded to the crisis enhanced consumer trust," he says.
What the industry has always done very well is discourage pet owners from feeding their cats and dogs anything which doesn't come out of a bag, pouch or tin.
No table scraps, no home cooked meals, no raw meat and no bones. Too rich, too "unbalanced" and too dangerous, they warn.
These may seem like healthy, natural, cheaper alternatives to expensive processed pet food, which costs up to R60 a kilogram, but you'd be compromising your pet's health, the industry warns.
In the case of the "premium" brands sold at veterinary practices, the vets strongly advise pet owners to feed their animals solely on packaged food.
Coming from someone with a medical degree, it's a very powerful endorsement. And it's backed by the SA Veterinary Association.
But across the globe, there are voices of dissent.
The processed pet food industry is accused of adversely affecting our pets' health and it's argued that grain-based, heavily processed, meat-poor pellets are not the ideal diet for either cats or dogs, both of which are essentially carnivores.
The most vociferous of these is Australian-based veterinarian Dr Tom Lonsdale, author of Work Wonders: Feed your dog raw meaty bones (see sidebar)
Dr Lonsdale is also extremely outspoken about what he terms "the cosy relationship" between vets and pet food manufacturers.
"We as a profession have been led by the nose by vested interests into the current situation, where younger vets actually recommend commercial pet foods as the best available way of feeding domestic pets," he says.
Ironically, for the first 15 years of his working life as a graduate of the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, Lonsdale warned pet owners against home cooked meals "because they were unlikely to get the balance of nutrients right".
"Raw meat posed a risk due to bacteria and lack of calcium, I told them. As for bones, they posed a hazard for breaking teeth and causing obstruction.
"Oh, how I cringe (now)!"
In South Africa, most vets have packets of pellets piled high in the reception area of the practice.
I'm told that the receptionists are treated to lavish lunches and other "spoils" by the pet food companies, and vets routinely attend training seminars at luxury locations, also hosted by the industry.
The (human) medical profession has a name for such perks: perverse incentives.
Medical reps used to give doctors expensive gifts; doctors were invited to lavish "speaker functions" with their spouses, as well as fully-paid medical conferences, often overseas.
But thanks to the Perverse Incentives Policy - implemented as part of the Medicines Control Act's Marketing Code in 2004 - the drug company freebies are now extremely limited.
Apparently no such limitations hamper the pet food companies in their quest to sell as much of their product from veterinary practices as possible.
"It's not frowned upon for pet or animal feed companies to host their clients at seminars and dinners," says Hundley.
"It's regarded as part of marketing."
Dr Clive Marwick, president of the South African Veterinary Association (SAVA), said that Act 36, the legislation which governs pet food manufacturing in South Africa, does not make reference to perverse incentives.
"It will thus not be within the ambit of SAVA to place any restrictions on veterinarians selling pet feeds.
"Veterinarians feel they can sell the products because of the technical back-up and scientific research that has gone into the product.
"They have the pets' wellbeing at heart," Dr Marwick said.
Dr Guy Fyvie, veterinary consultant for Hill's Pet Nutrition, said the company helped pay for vets to attend congresses, such as one in Sun City last July, to enable them "to attend continuing education, including developments in clinical nutrition".