Both of my Shih Tzus absolutely loved Nature's Recipe Farm Stand Selects Turkey Recipe. I thought I had found the answer to all! I went to my usual natural pet food store where I usually purchase dog food to ask if they would consider carrying it - along with the outstanding canned food that Nature's Recipe Farm Stand Selects offers. (Real slices of real chicken and real slices of real lamb - it also smells delicious.) So, my helpful representative at the natural food store went to the computer and looked up the ingredients to the dry dog food. Reading down, she came upon "animal digest" which she couldn't define, but the rest of the ingredients were OK.

Are you ready? I am very unhappy because I am back to one dog who refuses to eat as I threw out what was left in the bag. I guess animal digest is a wonderful flavor BUT....and I cut and copy:

Animal Digest


AAFCO: A material which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue. The animal tissues used shall be exclusive of hair, horns, teeth, hooves and feathers, except in such trace amounts as might occur unavoidably in good factory practice and shall be suitable for animal feed. If it bears a name descriptive of its kind or flavor(s), it must correspond thereto.

A cooked-down broth made from unspecified parts of unspecified animals. The animals used can be obtained from any source, so there is no control over quality or contamination. Any kind of animal can be included: "4-D animals" (dead, diseased, disabled, or dying prior to slaughter), goats, pigs, horses, rats, misc. roadkill, animals euthanized at shelters, restaurant and supermarket refuse and so on.

I believe one can reasonably assume that this ingredient is obtained from the floors of slaughter houses. Basically it is refuse! I had planned to write to Del Monte to protest and ask if they could drop this unacceptable ingredient, but since it is a flavoring ingredient, I doubt they would.

(She found nothing in the canned food that was this unacceptable. Some sugar and other questionable ingredients, but nothing that will prevent me from using a teaspoonful to mix in with the dry food.)

So sad; too bad.