Your Pet's Food Isn't Food

For nearly a century, the ingredients used to make pet food — and the way in which they’re processed — have resulted in products so unsafe and so low quality, they don’t meet the legal definition of being “edible.” In other words, they don’t meet the bare minimum safety standard for food.

Today, pet food makers need only meet “feed grade” standards, which permit expired, diseased, and contaminated ingredients to be used, along with extremely harsh processing and minimal inspection at manufacturing facilities. Yet this unhealthy product can still be labeled “natural," "premium," and "organic" pet food.

We are looking to change that with the passing of the Pet Food Accountability Act.

If the act is adopted, a new “Human Food Grade” certification and seal would make it much easier for New Yorkers to identify pet foods whose ingredients, manufacturing processes, and end-product meet the basic safety and quality standards to which real food is held.

The law would also amend and strengthen existing misbranding provisions. This would mean that using pictures and words that suggest an ingredient is, for example, “natural farm-raised chicken” — when the reality is a rejected assortment of chicken parts (or sometimes not even chicken at all) rendered into a powder — constitutes false or misleading advertising.

Join us in sending a letter to the New York State Assembly expressing your support for the Pet Food Accountability Act, transparency in the pet food industry, and for longer, healthier lives for pets.