Pet King

Chapter 1429: Leftovers

It was already a new generation. Some people’s minds were still stuck in the old days where if it comes from foreign countries, especially the United States, they must be better than domestic ones. Some people still believe such an explanation.

Qi Tong blew up this American dog food brand that Zhang Zian hadn’t seen before. This must’ve been the American standard. It had been well received with fast-growing sales in the US market. Throughout everything that he mentioned, he continued to talk about American standards and contrasted it with his dissatisfaction with domestic food safety issues, detailing the major domestic food safety issues in recent years. Reading between the lines, he was trying to say that domestically produced food was not safe for either humans or dogs.

The problems of domestic food safety standards couldn’t be changed. After all, the country was too big with a large population and high pressures in life. Everyone had sharpened their minds thinking of ways to make money; some people then came up with ridiculous ideas.

But specifically towards dog food, people in both China and the United States were picky because pet food safety wasn’t as strict as human food safety. Despite this, many American dog foods will indicate AAFCO on the packaging bag, including this dog food marketed by Qi Tong.

AFAAFCO was certified by the American Feed Management Association, indicating that only the nutritional ingredients in this feed have reached the standard and believe the feed is still unsafe.

Furthermore, AAFCO wasn’t an official organization set up by the government. Much like the toothpaste industry that provided the national dental defense certification, the members of the AAFCO committee also included representatives from feed manufacturers and raw material suppliers. In a way, didn’t that mean these people were both the athletes and referees?

In theory, the US Food and Drug Administration was responsible for pet food safety but couldn’t fully control human food safety. Thus, they put in even less time and effort in controlling pet food safety.

US pet feed problems didn’t occur only once or twice, but almost every year since they had a recall system, where the manufacturers were responsible for recalling the products once problems were found. There have even been cases where metal and plastic were found in popular dog food. Had these been found in domestic dog food, they would have been dealt with long ago.

Additionally, many dog food brands from both China and the US, do not necessarily meet the nutritional requirements; they were written by XG8.

Some have wondered how they could have passed the AAFCO certification. When the nutritional ingredients still weren’t up to standard, it was because of the batch problem. This was the case in the processed food industry. It may have been that the initial batch of raw materials was good, so processed food would’ve eventually met the standards. The raw materials or the origin of the raw materials may have been changed later on to reduce costs, and the standards may not be met. AAFCO could only certify the first batch of products sent for testing. It was impossible to re-certify each batch of products because the costs of human and material resources prevented them from doing so.

As a member of the pet industry who had been to the United States, Zhang Zian understood that even human food safety wasn’t always 100% reliable. How could people demand 100% reliable for pet food safety? As long as you were human, you would make mistakes. The same went for manufacturers.

However, the ingredients list of this dog food was a bit ambiguous, and the coverage of these by-products was far too wide.

By-products, waste-products, and leftovers all meant the same thing here.

What were the leftovers?

How would someone have defined leftovers?

A chicken ham sausage that humans regularly consume had chicken and starch listed as its top two ingredients. That was fine, but doesn’t the chicken also include their buttocks, feet, entrails, ground bone powder, skin, neck, and lymphatic tissue?

Were these still part of the chicken or its leftovers?

From below the chicken belly, where was the “chicken ass” thought to start from?

If someone were to look for processed food on the website carefully, labels such as “made of whole beef” and “made of pure chicken breast” may have been added to the details page. If that was true, it usually meant the quality of this product was better. Of course, these would’ve been more expensive than the products without the same labels.

However, it was possible to find similar labels for pet food. Even if there were, the price would’ve been high. Not everyone was willing to pay such high prices for pet food. Feed manufacturers didn’t use such feed as the main sales pitch because the public wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Even so, the term “by-products” was too vague. In extreme cases, this may have meant that the ingredients of the feed may contain meat from sources other than the five major meat sources: cattle, sheep, pigs, fish, and chicken.

Sweatshops were found not only in China but also in the United States. These factories in the United States had also been involved in scandals where pet food was made from stray cats and dogs.

The condition of pet food in Europe was slightly marginally better. After all, the mad cow disease was spread from Europe since the feed processing mills pulverized the viscera and bones of cattle to make feed for their own cattle to add calcium to their diets. However, the mix contained the viscera and bones of sick and dead cattle.

Now that people knew that mad cow disease could be transmitted from cattle to people, they dared not do it again; cattle were typical food sources for humans. If someone contracted the disease just for the manufacturers to make a small profit, there would’ve been several penalties including jail time.

Even so, the exposed black-hearted factories in the United States still made cat food and dog food from dead stray cats and dogs. This greatly reduced the cost and increased the calcium and nutrition content at the same time.

As Marx said, capitalism was completely covered blood and dirt when it was introduced to the world. If it had a 10% profit, it was guaranteed to be used everywhere. If it had a 20% profit, it became active. If it has a 50% profit, the manufacturers would take risks. For a 100% profit, it trampled over all human laws. If there was a 300% profit, they committed crimes that would even lead to corporal punishment.

The black-hearted factory in the United States didn’t care since cats and dogs were not traditional food sources for humans. People did not eat cats and dogs, so they figure out that any potential problems would at most only affect the lives of cats and dogs. Humans would not be in any danger.

This clever trick wasn’t wrong as this theory was applicable in developed western countries.

Even so, the national conditions here were different.

Zhang Zian inexplicably thought of the people who were suddenly sick at the waste acquisition station. From their tone and actions that night, as well as the prepared pot and seasoning, this wasn’t their first attempt at killing stray dogs to eat their meat. Since there were so many stray dogs, no one would care even if one quietly went missing. Besides, many people thought that reducing the number of stray dogs was much safer for humans.

The strange disease and the dog meat they ate... Were they somehow connected?