You know, dogs may lick their butts, but if you have a dog, you should be responsible enough to care what your dog eats.  They are still affected by pesticides, and by hormones and whatnot in meat.  Regular supermarket brands of dog foods can have diseased animals' flesh and unhealthy, non-nutritious animal parts that are not digestible enough for human food.  Do you really want your dog eating food whosemain ingredient is "chicken meal" when you know that means the ground-up carcasses of chickens who were so diseased even constant antibiotic-pumping couldn't keep them alive?  

Also, what about the animals who go into the dog food?  Don't we still care about them, and want to know they had decent lives?

Just my $0.02, but this isn't where I would choose to save money.  I buy bread off the day-old rack, I stock up when things go on sale (I recently bought twelve containers of raisins because they were less than half price, and, hey, raisins keep), I eat in season and eat lots of squash and cabbage...but I buy my dogs the best food I can get.

Other than that, though, great column!

We shall be looking into a local CSA program this spring.  The fetching young farmer who sells on our corner on Thursdays and Sundays (nowadays, lots of varieties of wonderful apples) had not heard about it, though, when I asked him.

Dogs and other domestic animals deserve to eat high-quality food.  My Michael makes Little White Dog's food from wholewheat couscous, chopped up vegetables, and free-range chicken breast.  Her treats, though, we buy: jerky strips made from free-range duck breast.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

My broke ass can't afford organic dog food.  However, I did recently learn an interesting tidbit that improved my dog's life without ruining my finances: apparently alot of dogs are allergic to wheat and corn, two common ingredients in alot of conventional dog foods.  My dog was getting pretty sick from the food I was feeding him; he was drooling alot, lethargic, and foaming at the mouth (no it wasn't rabies, he has his shots).  My vet suggested switching his food and eliminating the wheat and corn cured his ills.  A friend of mine had a similar experience.

Road killed deer are great for dog food, at least in winter here.  They are flash frozen.

You cut off some of the undamaged meat and drag the rest back in the woods away from the road.  Why?

It saves the lives of predators and scavengers that eat the deer.  I have seen as many as 5 bald eagles feeding on a deer carcass at the same time beside the road here.  Very dangerous for our wild friends feeding this close to the highway.

Cut the meat in strips, cure it, and refreeze it.  No chemicals or tumors in that dog food!  And what could be cheaper?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Thanks for the link to the good & and bad standard commercial fruits and veggies.

Regarding this conundrum:
  "I find it very hard to pick the organic can of beans (and cans of beans are a staple in a brokeass vegetarian's diet)..."

The beans should be a staple, but cans need not be. Prices vary to be sure, but I suspect organic dry beans, from a bin in a organic store [and put into the container you remembered to bring], would run considerably less than the canned non-organic product.  Today, here in Ohio at 3 degrees F, the gas to cook the beans is "free" since it offsets the gas for the house furnace, plus you save the energy that goes into the metal can, and into transporting the water by truck.  Ralph Borsodi probably could point out more savings.

- tracy

A lot of dog owners I know make their own dog food. I do, often, mainly using leftovers, but I also feed her an organic brand (not necessarily because it's organic, but because it contains only human quality ingredients, no xxx-meal, for instance).

There are a lot of differing opinions on what type of diet to feed dogs, however, and lots of information out there. Google it.

Gregory, I have a pressure cooker but admit I am afraid of it! Just how easy is it to blow up your kitchen?

Does that mean that a good environmentalist doesn't keep a dog or a cat, both natural predators whose diets require meat for health?

I find it odd and amusing that this thread is simultaneous discussing how to decrease our own meat intake, and how to increase the meat intake of our pets.

Does that mean that a good environmentalist doesn't keep a dog or a cat, both natural predators whose diets require meat for health?
I gave up meat in my own diet twenty-some years ago when I crossed a personal threshold of awareness of the process of industrial meat production. For a while then I succeeded in disassociating from the meat in the food I fed to my much-loved dogs, but it  became over time harder and harder for me to act as enabler to their undoubted dietary needs: when they left me, I did not seek replacements. I'll never keep a carnivorous pet again.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

GreenEngineer makes the adorable comment: "I find it odd and amusing that this thread is simultaneous discussing how to decrease our own meat intake, and how to increase the meat intake of our pets."

I did not notice that anyone has been recommending an increase in the amount of meat that our pets eat.  The quality of the meat that they are fed is another matter, as well as its source.

N.B., Cats are much much stricter carnivores than dogs.  The couple of times that I cat-sat, I was instructed to feed them the wet contents of cans, and also put out some dry food which the cats never ate.  If they did not throw up, I counted myself lucky.

I understand Spaceshaper's difficult decision.  I would only comment that if you judge yourself to be a good, responsible owner of a dog or cat, who can afford to keep one, then taking one home from a shelter for abandoned homeless animals is a mitzvah.  As for the compromise involved in feeding it meat, well, this is where animal-rights ethics needs to say something constructive (I am working on it).  The Isaian utopia, "the lion shall lie down with the lamb" and all that, is an ideal, but not immmediately so for animals themselves, and we must beware of interpreting it fundamentalistically.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

I think an increase in the amount of meat consumed by an animal is implied in the idea of switching them from a commercial feed (which is largely corn or rice) to a raw meat diet, as was discussed above.

That's what I was referring to, anyway.

Greenengineer,
Feeding a dog a raw/fresh diet as opposed to kibble doesn't necessarily mean more meat.  For one thing, you can still use "filler" grain products, rice, etc, but apparently some grain products are more digestible and less allergy-provoking than others.  So it's not as if anyone is talking about switching from kibble to all-meat-all-the-time.  Most dogs like at least some vegetables, and some of them really love them.  My dogs beg more if I seem about to offer them broccoli than if I seem about to offer them something involving raw meat (which is possibly learned, since it's extremely rare that I can cope with that, whereas they get veggies all the time, so have learned to like and anticipate them more?  Just goes to show their tastes, like ours, are mutable).

I just got a container of this powder called "vegedog" that supposedly supplies all the taurine and other stuff dogs normally can only get enough of from meat, but it's all from vegetarian sources.  Supposedly this allows you to make your own kibble from veg ingredients with the powder added, and then supplement with fresh veggies.  I'll see if it works for the dogs, and/or for me (much more work for mother!).  I think I would still feed them some regular kibble, or maybe even add a small amount of fresh meat to their diet, but it could potentially reduce their meat consumption.  That said, I've been so busy, the container and the "recipes" it came with have been sitting in the cabinet for a couple of weeks, completely untouched.

Our German shepherds get complete nutrition from
Dick Van Patten's natural balance, vegetarian
formula. They are healthy, shiny, and strong. Our breeder feels that only food free of corn should be fed to dogs, due to immune problems.
cassandra (sandee)

Well, why not; pandas are a sort of bear, they are within Carnivora, and at this point in their evolution, they are apparently bamboo-o-vores.  (And also at this point in their evolution, though not for the same reason, they may be approaching the big exit door.)

So, thanks, Cassandra, I shall look into Dick van Batten's "natural balance, vegetarian formula."

Little White will have to decide.  She is not a puppy anymore, as she reminds us, she is a young lady of nearly four and a half.  And she has catholic tastes.  I doubt she will want to renounce carnivory.  And more specifically, she is quite a piscivore; she loves the occasional bite of sardine, and yesterday she begged for a taste or two of my Chinese lunch, rolled eggplant with seafood (white fish) stuffing.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Decent article overall, except for the cleaning own butt comment which stuck out for me too. I was glad to see the push for local, even if it's not totally organic. This is important. Re: local dairies. Another possible plus, returnable glass milk bottles. You pay a deposit and the bottles are reused as often as possible. And milk tastes better in glass.

If I had a dog, I would definitely make its food from scratch. But my sister and I have cats and they are infinitely fussier than dogs. Between us we have six, each with his or her own particular tastes and dietary needs. Ideal for cats is raw food, but I only have one cat who will eat it, and then only occasionally. We do the best we can, however, with high quality food, nothing purchased in a supermarket, sometimes special ordered. We have spoiled, and healthy, cats. I don't like to think about the percentage of our budget that goes to those lovely creatures. If one loves cats, one was probably born that way. There's something about coming home to wonderful, sleek, handsome, furry, purry felines that cannot be surpassed. However, I know the very thought of such a thing makes some run in the opposite direction.

I have read some frightening things about what feeding commercial cat food for generations has done to the overall health and genetic vitality of cats. I also think over vaccination has contributed to cats' decline in health. Despite the preferance these days to keeping cats indoors, I've seen for myself that never going outdoors does have a negative impact on a cat's health. For the record, we have indoor cats. But until about four years ago, that was not the case. Three of our cats were allowed outside during the day, except in winter. One came to us from a barn, the other two kept him company. But one spring birds were nesting on our front porch and I decided the cats weren't going out until the babies flew away. This kept the cats indoors much longer than normal, and since they seemed to have survived it, we decided that was it. They were inside cats. It was better for the birds and we no longer had to worry about them getting eaten by coyotes or fishers. I could see that my cat, Porter, the ex-barn cat, was a bit depressed and eventually he developed urinary problems from dehydration. Even though he was eating fine, from my perspective, his body was missing the animals he must have routinely killed and eaten. It took quite a while, using herbs and carefully changing his diet to solve the problem. I learned that dry food, even "high quality" dried food, is not the best food for cats, especially neutered males. They become dehydrated, their urine becomes concentrated and has more of a tendancy to create stones which can lead to urinary problems. When we are totally responsible for what our animals eat we must do the best we can to provide a diet they can thrive on. Cats are not meant to be vegetarians.

There are many perks to volunteering:

 - warm, fuzzy feeling
 - meeting cool people
 - free veggies!

I volunteered at my local university's student-run organic farm. I did this once a week on harvest days. It's hard to sell produce that looks imperfect (to the general public) so they gave them to the volunteers. Sure easy to eat them! Super fresh, local, organic, delicious!

(The pretty-looking stuff they sell to the university's fancy-pants bistro.)

c.