Mike: Hello, this is Mike Adams. I’m here with Dr. Lisa Newman. Thanks for joining me today.
Newman: Well, thanks for having me today, Mike.
Mike: You are the founder of the Azmira Holistic Animal Care product line. You also run a pet care clinic, correct?
Newman: Well, it’s not a veterinary clinic. What I have is two retail stores, and my retail staff goes through a correspondence course that I put together so they’re fully trained in providing the holistic animal care lifestyle.
Mike: So, your staff can offer pet lifestyle consultations?
Newman: What they do is educate pet owners, and what we also have is a direct phone line people can use. If they call 520-886-1727, they can get educated on their animal’s specific needs. We’re not a clinic that diagnoses; we’re not there to prescribe medications. We do know a great deal of alternative care methods that can be applied to animals and can help reverse disease or prevent symptoms from occurring.
Mike: This is really interesting. I want to get back to this. First, can you give a description of what is wrong with the pet food that is out there right now? Why are we seeing such an epidemic of diabetes in dogs and cats, for example? What’s going on out there?
Newman: Well, it is really scary. What we’ve seen is the lowering of the quality of the food and the addition of many chemical byproducts to cheapen the foods. So, you provide a food to a pet that has no
nutritional value. It is pretty, it has different colors in it, it has different shapes in it, and that is all to appeal to the owner. Give your dog gravy bits, doesn’t that sound good? Unfortunately, the gravy bits often are
killers hidden in a bunch of brown gunk.
Mike: It’s processed food just like we see in the human supply.
Newman: It’s even worse processed food than what we see in the human supply, because, guess what?
Animals can’t lobby for themselves like humans can.
Mike: That’s right. What else is in there that would shock people?
Newman: What about euthanized dogs and cats? We know this from a San Francisco Chronicle investigative report, which followed euthanized dogs and cats from clinics directly to the rendering plants and directly to the pet food industry.
Mike: Okay, so just as a reality check to people listening, you’re saying that when dogs and cats are put to sleep, some of those end up in the pet food supply?
Newman: That’s right, because they are “protein.” They are animal meat, and the way that they show up on the labels is as animal meat or animal meat byproducts.
Mike: Is this allowed by regulators?
Newman: It is not only allowed by regulators, it is actually encouraged by regulators. If we were to look at the AFCO handbook, which is the Association of American Feed Control Officials, and we were to take a
look under protein, for instance, we would also see recycled shoe leather. Now Mike, I’m going to ask you, would you sit down and feed your family recycled shoe leather for dinner? It’s a protein Mike, come on.
Do you think you want to try and assimilate that as a protein? Not only that but feathers, hooves, hides and horns? These are all sources of protein — 100 percent protein. My fingernails are 100 percent protein, but my doctor sure wouldn’t want me to eat my fingernails and try to survive on that, would he?
Mike: So, without naming brand names, how prevalent are these kinds of ingredients in the popular supply of pet food?
Newman: I would say approximately 60 percent of the pet food that you can get at the grocery store has some sort of animal meat by-product in it.
Mike: Wow.
Newman: Now, that’s not necessarily a euthanized dog or cat. It could be road kill, or it could be swamp rats. Nutria is a swamp rat that grows in Louisiana. It is all around and can be easily hunted, or gathered, if you will. They go right into the pet food ingredients as protein.
Mike: Is there something wrong with swamp rats? I don’t know. It doesn’t sound appetizing.
Newman: I don’t think the meat is all that bad, but they grind up the entire rat. You have the disease that occurs in the swamp rats. You have the handling method. They kill these swamp rats and put them in storage, which is just a container sitting on a shore. How long do the swamp rats last out of refrigeration?
So, now you have rancid, putrefying meat. We know that rancid, putrefying meat is perfectly okay in your pet’s food because AFCO says you can use dead, dying, diseased or disabled animals. Now, here is where it gets really tricky on a bag food label. A lot of “natural companies” love to say that their meat is inspected by the USDA. They never say that is has been approved, do they? It’s only if it’s inspected and approved that it is of human quality. But they use the word “inspected.” You’ll find it splashed all over USDA inspected meats. Well Mike, all meat is inspected.
Mike: It can be inspected and come back with a failing grade.
Will be continue .
