A Short History Of Dog Food Nutrition (excerpt)
Believe it or not, dog food has not always controlled an entire aisle in your local grocery store. The use of bagged and canned foods became popular in the United States after World War II.
Before that, most people fed their dogs what was available including left-overs, scraps of food, and some times inexpensive cuts of meat from the local butcher - another artifact of the past. In 1860, the first processed dog food was introduced by James Spratt, of Cincinnati, Ohio who developed a biscuit made of wheat, beet root, vegetables and beef blood. The name of this new product was Spratt's Patent Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes.
The idea for special food for dogs gained popularity as mill operators and slaughter houses found dog food to be a good market for their by-products. Since many of these meat sources were non-human grade, the practice became common to mix these with the grains and cook them together for many hours or days to kill bacteria and disease. The final mix was then formed into pellets that were easily bagged for convenience of feeding.
---------------
Yep. Scary huh?
__________________ ~ A friend told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn. ~
°¨¨¨°ºOº°¨¨¨° Ann | Pfeiffer | Marcel Verdel Purcell | Wylie | Artie °¨¨¨°ºOº°¨¨¨° |