Pet Food Ingredients

I Take it All Back

Everything I’ve said about APHIS EU certification…I take it all back. Another document recently provided to me shows this certification can mean little to nothing as far as quality of ingredients.

Susan Thixton

Published

April 20, 2012

As the old saying goes, you learn something new everyday. This one was big for me – and disappointing. It turns out, a veterinarian signature can “approve” a pet food APHIS EU certification – just about regardless of the quality of ingredients. And it seems that the regulations are changing so quickly on this – that the USDA hasn’t even updated their application that must accompany the pet food; half of the current form is edited with strike through lines through some/most of the previous requirements.

From the Health certificate “For processed petfood other than canned petfood, intended for dispatch to or for transit through the European Union.”

Here are the sections that are most significant…

“I, the undersigned official veterinarian,…certify that the pet food described…:
II.2 has been prepared exclusively with the following animal by-products:
either carcasses and parts of animals slaughtered or, in the case of game, bodies or parts of animals killed, and which are fit for human consumption in accordance with Union legislation, but are not intended for human consumption for commercial reasons;”

All of the above is strike through text on the original document- meaning it no longer applies. Thus, “fit for human consumption” or human grade does not apply to APHIS EU certification.

(Bold added) “and/or carcasses or bodies and parts of animals which are rejected as unfit for human consumption in accordance with Union legislation, but which did not show any signs of disease communicable to humans or animals;”

Note – this section was not stricken. In other words, animal ingredients in the pet food can be sourced from animals rejected for use in human food. And even more absurd is “did not show any signs of disease communicable to humans or animals.” What type of ‘signs’ are they speaking of? Are we to believe the veterinarian signing this document actually inspected each and every rejected for use in human food animal and animal part before they were processed into the pet food? I doubt it.

APHIS EU certified also means the pet food can contain “heads of poultry, hides and skins, including trimmings and splitting thereof, horns and feet, including the phalanges and the carpus and metacarpus bones, tarsus and metatarsus bones, of animals other than ruminants, pig bristles and feathers.”

Throughout the entire document, any previous requirement that stated “fit for human consumption” have all been stricken.

It appears APHIS EU means little. If indeed this certification guaranteed human grade ingredients at one point in time (I doubt it all now), that is no longer the case. All it takes is a signature of a veterinarian that probably didn’t see one bit of raw material that went into that pet food. The one good of this certification, until it gets stricken too, is that none of the pet food can contain specified risk materials (suspect mad cow disease materials). That’s seems to be it.

My apologies to everyone. I feel I have been misled and my apologies to all if you feel the same because of what was previously written on TruthaboutPetFood.com about APHIS EU certification. I have deleted the most recent article on APHIS EU – I don’t want any more to read the wrong information. What a disappointment this is, but at the very least, now we all know.

Thank You! to the friend that shared this APHIS document with all of us.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author, Buyer Beware
Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
PetsumerReport.com

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