At The Ultimate Diet, we feel that it is important to know what is in the
           food you are giving to your pet. We also think you should know why those
           ingredients are present. 

        For the most part, large commercial manufacturers feel exactly the opposite. 
       Though their labels appear simple and straight forward, the companies use 
       phrases that mislead you into thinking that something is either present when
       it is not, or more nutritional and natural than in fact it is.

          As an example, Poultry By-Product Meal, an ingredient found in many brands of
          dog food, sounds like a healthy combination of poultry meat: a bit from the
          breast, some meat from the wing, a little from the drumstick. 

   However, according to The Association of American Feed Control Officials,
   an independent group that issues guidelines approved by the Food and Drug
   Administration, Poultry By-Product Meal "must consist of non-rendered clean
   parts of carcasses of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, viscera, free
   from fecal content and foreign matter except in such trace amounts as might
   occur unavoidably in good factory practice." Doesn't sound all that appealing,
   does it? (Incidentally, AAFCO does not provide definitions of "trace amounts"
   or "good factory practice.")  

    In addition to the label not really telling you what is in the can or bag, the
    order which the ingredients are listed can also be misleading. 

            Ingredients are listed in descending order of weight (heaviest first) under
            standards established by the Center for Veterinary Medicine for the FDA.
            Though on the surface this may seem logical, it becomes problematic when
            looked at more closely. 

 For instance, if one were to take an empty dog food can and stuff chicken feathers
 into it until it is three quarters full, and then fill the remainder with chicken
 meat, clearly the meat would weigh more than the feathers. According to standard
 label practices, the chicken would be listed first and the feathers second, even
 though the feathers occupy 75% of the "food." Of course, you would never see
 "feathers" listed on the ingredients of a can of dog food. If our hypothetical can
 of dog "food" were actually available in your grocery store the ingredient list
 would contain only one item: Chicken By-Product Meal.

    Concerned pet owners will also want to be familiar with another practice common
    to pet food ingredient lists: Splitting. Splitting is simply the separating of
    like ingredients to mislead you into thinking there is less of something in a
    particular food than there is.
          
             For example, Pedigree Puppy and Pedigree Puppy with Lamb list their first
             four ingredients as Rice, Ground Corn, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn
             Gluten Meal. By splitting the Corn into two different categories, the
             manufacturer is able to move the ingredient further down the list.
             However, if you were to add the total amount of corn together, it becomes
             highly likely that it would move up the ingredient list. How much higher
             up the list? In this case, corn is already the second ingredient. Is it 
             possible that corn would then be the first ingredient and not the second?
             If this is indeed the case, you, as a consumer, have been lead to believe
             that this product contains more rice than corn, which, given this scenario
             is not absolutely the case. 
         
         Finally, it's important to keep in mind the purpose of the ingredients. The food
         in the two Pedigree foods mentioned above have rice and corn as the first two
         ingredients. You may be asking "What's wrong with rice and corn?" Nothing is
         wrong with corn and rice. Unless you're a natural carnivore, which both cats
         and dogs are. The digestive systems of our companion animals are geared
         towards flesh foods; their primary source of protein (which would be the first
         ingredients on the can) should not come from grains and vegetables.