A study commissioned by Butternut Box conducted by OnePoll, came to the conclusion that millions of dog owners in the UK have no idea what is in their pet's food. There were 2000 participants and 48% of them were able to name just three ingredients. 23% of the participants struggled to understand the ingredients listed on dog food labels.
I'm sure, by the way, that the same would apply to cats. There is certainly, as far as I am concerned, a big disconnect between pet food manufacturers and consumers in respect of labelling ingredients.
44% of participants were confused by what they perceive as contradictory advice about a healthy dog diet.
And because of this lack of understanding of what is in dog food, 36% of the participants admitted that they are worried about their dog's health in the context of their diet.
Four in 10 found planning their dog's diet stressful and certainly more stressful than trying to work out their own diet with 41% admitting that they would want clearer labelling on dog food packaging.
Clearly, a healthy diet can help a dog to be healthy and help to eliminate or at least manage health problems.
The argument is that there is a need for greater transparency and information about dogs' diets in order to help owners to make better more informed choices.
Comment: there is probably a general suspicion about the quality of pet food made by big business. The problem applies to cats and dogs and other pets. There are some ingredients in pet food such as rendered, hydrolysed or pasteurised animal by-products along with artificial colourings, flavourings and preservatives.
It's believed that the manufacturers try to avoid drawing attention to these additives in order to preserve the food and make it look better but which are arguably detrimental to health by making the labelling more opaque and harder to understand.
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For 45% of dog owners, price is the deciding factor and 13% were swayed by the packaging. That is the appearance of the packaging encourage them to purchase the product.
27% of dog owners said that their dog was a fussy eater and 17% said that their dog turns up their nose at the food if he or she does not think that it is up to scratch. 11% of dogs refuse to eat their food.
Around 30% of dog owners say that the dog shows more interest in the food that they are eating then the dog food that has been put down for them resulting in 61% of dog owners feeding their beloved pooch human food at least once a week with around 25% of owners admitting that their motivation for doing this is guilt.
That said, 23% provided human food for their dog in the belief that fresh, human quality food is better for a dog than commercially prepared dog food about which they don't know enough.
The conclusion is that there is a need for dog owners to better understand the ingredients in dog food and the same would apply to cat food. And on the other side of the coin, they would appear to be an obligation on pet food manufacturers to be more transparent about dog food ingredients and to minimise additives which might be detrimental to dogs' health.
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