As a Green store, we of course are dedicated to sustainability, but that can be a real challenge with pet food.
The larger a company is, the more difficult and expensive it is for them to source the most sustainable ingredients on a large enough scale to meet national demand. One might expect that we would source only Organic foods, but this is more of a challenge than you might expect – many pet foods that are certified organic are not, in our opinion, necessarily suitable nutritionally for carnivores; organic meats are expensive, and often a very large percentage of the protein is derived from less expensive organic grains.

We dropped one line of “organic” pet food (Castor and Pollux) because we found out that they were using farmed salmon in their foods, one of the most ecologically harmful, least organic ingredients you could use (enormous amounts of antibiotics and other chemicals used, extremely polluting, and a big risk to wild salmon populations) as well as being so high in PCBs that humans are recommended to not eat it more than once a month due to risk of cancer – what about much smaller animals that eat it every meal of every day? We don’t like farmed salmon, and we were upset that a food that touts the benefits of organic foods (more humane to the animals, more sustainable, lack of chemicals used to raise/grow products, etc) would not stand up publicly against this very un-organic ingredient, let alone allow it in their foods.

Most of our food companies use pastured, antibiotic and hormone free meats, as well as sustainable fisheries and cage free chickens, though not all. Commercial raw foods for pets almost always score higher in sustainability – Some of our most sustainable foods are found in our freezers; brands like Rad Cat and Small Batch are our favorites, as they use locally sourced ingredients, pastured meats, and organic fruits and veggies, and are both produced in or near Portland.

GMO ingredients are more and more pervasive though both in human foods and pet foods, and are very difficult to avoid, especially because they are not labelled. We realize that they of course occur in many commercially made foods, so it is impressive when a company steps forward to make foods that are largely GMO free. Two kibble companies that are doing this are KLN (Natural Planet Organics, Pure Vita, and Nutrisource) and Champion (Orijen/Acana).

What is GMO?
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) refer to plants and animals with an altered genetic make-up. GMOS are created by changing an organism’s genetic composition by artificial means, often involving the transfer of specific traits, or genes, from one organism into a plant or animal of an entirely different species.

According to Gracelinks.org, nearly 400 million acres of farmland worldwide are now used to grow GE crops such as cotton, corn, soybeans and rice.  In the United States, GE soybeans, corn and cotton make up 93%, 88% and 94% of the total acreage of the respective crops.  The majority of genetically engineered crops grown today are engineered to be resistant to pesticides and/or herbicides so that they can withstand being sprayed with weed killer while the rest of the plants in the field die.

Proponents claim genetically engineered crops are designed to use fewer pesticides than non-GE crops, when in reality GE plants can require even heavier use of chemicals.  This is because weeds and insects can and do become resistant to pesticides, leading farmers to spray an ever increasing volume of chemicals on their crops, and eventually are having to resort to more and more toxic chemicals to fight these “superweeds” and “superbugs”.  This pollutes the environment, depletes the soil, exposes food to higher levels of toxins, and creates greater safety concerns for farmers, farm workers, and people living adjacent to these farming operations. Pollen from GMO plants can spread and contaminate other crops (a real risk for organic crops).

There have been very few credible studies on GM food safety. Nevertheless, the available findings already give cause for concern. Opinion polls show that up to 90% of Americans want GMO ingredients to be labeled as such, but so far, efforts in the U.S. have failed. Many other countries in the world (more than 60) have already passed laws labeling GMO foods for the consumer. Meanwhile, our country just passed the Monsanto Protection Act, effectively protects biotech companies Like Monsanto from federal courts should any evidence come to light about negative health side effects to the crops.

What you can do:

* Look for foods that are labelled GMO free.
* Choose Certified Organic products – USDA regulations prohibit organic foods from containing GE ingredients, and organic meats cannot come from animals that were fed GE crops. So eating organic is a surefire way to avoid GE foods.
* Support efforts to label GMO ingredients for human consumption
* Avoid soybeans, canola, corn, and sugar from sugar beets as these crops can have a high prevalence of GMO
* Making your pet’s food at home allows you to control the quality and sourcing for all of your ingredients, but make sure you do it right! Here are our favorite resources to help you make food at home that’s safe and balanced. Dogs: http://www.dogaware.com/diet/homemade.html Cats: http://catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

GMO Resources:

The Center for Food Safety – This network aims to educate consumers about the dangers of genetically engineered food. Their True Food Shoppers Guide lists brand-name foods that contain GMOs and those that are GE free

JustLabelIt This coalition strives to educate consumers about GE foods and to urge the FDA to label GE foods.
A summary of some of the environmental impact problems with GMO – click here

One of the craziest things happening in the GMO debate right now: we are on the verge of the approval of the first Genetically Modified animal: salmon that have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast. Act today to tell the FDA that it is unacceptable to approve this project without reliable safety testing and more complete research on environmental impact. If nothing else, it’s an enormous risk to wild salmon populations.

When we first opened, one of the things we thought was a no-brainer was looking into LED or other efficient lighting options for the sales floor. As the first environmentally friendly pet supply store in the nation, we wanted to make sure that we did everything we could to design for sustainability. The spotlights seemed to be a challenge though. LED technology has come a long way, but at the time, most LEDs were kind of blue, and not very bright at all. We needed bright spotlights to showcase products, and nothing existed at the time outside of the typical commercial spots. We kept doing research through the years, but even a few years ago the LED kind were enormous – like a dinner plate! Finally (9 years later), we found bulbs that really fit the bill! These new bulbs have a nice bright, warm white light, and are going to save us so very much money! Up front stings a little, as we had 87 bulbs to replace, but this will save us more than $1000 per year in energy costs. We got a healthy rebate from Energy Trust of Oregon for the purchase, and the rest will be paid for in energy savings in 2 years. The bulbs will last another 10 years after that at the rate we use them (each bulb has 40,000 hours of life). If you used these bulbs at home for 3 hours per day, they’d last 36.5 years and cost just $1.81 per year (based on 11 cents/kWh)! The best news? This project offsets about 4 tons of Co2 generated by fossil fuels , equal to taking one car off the road or more than 1/2 and acre of reforested trees! LEDs also give off far less heat (those regular spots were super duper hot!), which will likely help us with summer temperatures in the store, are dimmable, and have no mercury. If you’re interested in LED lights for your house or business, check out http://www.gc-lighting.com

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Christine is a guest blogger for RetireUSA – here’s the latest post : http://retireusa.net/blog/fence-me-in/

Every once in a while a customer comes into the store and asks about Canola Oil, as they have read a lot of scary things on the internet about it. Many sites online claim that Canola Oil “is a poisonous substance, an industrial oil that does not belong in the body. They claim that it contains “the infamous chemical warfare agent mustard gas,” hemagglutinins and toxic cyanide-containing glycocides; it causes mad cow disease, blindness, nervous disorders, clumping of blood cells and depression of the immune system”.  This same information is copied and pasted to many sites, and though Canola Oil is not our favorite oil (especially when used exclusively in anyone’s diet), these are distortions that should be cleared up for those who are trying to educate themselves about nutrition. Of course, one of the major problems we have with Canola oil is it’s largely a GMO crop that can cross pollinate with other members of the brassica family (broccoli, cabbage, brussels, kale, mustard, etc) damaging these crops (especially organic crops which cannot contain GMO material) and the livelihood of the farmers that grow them. Our discussion here focuses on the safety of Canola oil in pet foods, not to advocate for or against it, just for the sake of objectivity we want to address the truths vs. the fear-mongering.

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New post by Christine Mallar on RetireUSA blog – FYI – there is information here that is especially important for cats:

Record high temps across the country bring to my mind topics like keeping your pets well hydrated to better able to deal with the heat, but the truth is, hydration is important year round to the health of our animals. Read More!

By Christine Mallar
The Chinese Chicken debacle continues. The FDA has issued 3 separate warnings to the public about the danger of consuming these treats.  Almost 2000 pets reported so far that have been sickened or have died from consuming Chinese chicken jerky, which we know is only a fraction of the true number. When we hear from customers that they had purchased these treats in other stores and their dogs had acted sick after consuming them, the first question we ask is “Did you report it to the FDA or to your vet, or to the store you bought it from?” and the answer is invariably “No”. Message boards all over the internet are full of stories of problems with these treats. It’s very clearly a much larger problem than is reflected in the reported numbers.

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As usual, Holistic Vet Dr. Becker has written a fantastic article that I want to share with all of you. This article about tick prevention and tick born diseases is well worth reading and contains very valuable information. I encourage you to follow the link to read more!

The Very Best Way to Protect Your Pet from Ticks

By Dr. Becker

Last year around this time I had quite a battle with tick exposure with my own dogs, Violet, her brother Esau, his mate Ada, and my little Boston terrier, Rosco.

I thought I would share the entire saga with you, since summer is upon us once again and it’s shaping up to be an extra bad year for pests and parasites. Hopefully, I’ll provide some helpful information to those of you with pets that have tested positive for a tick-borne disease … or might before the season is over.  Read More….

by Christine Mallar

Do you know what to do if your pet encounters something toxic, or is bitten by a spider, or eats something he shouldn’t? I’ve stumbled upon a great iphone app that could be very useful in an emergency. Click here to read more:
http://retireusa.net/blog/pet-poisons-theres-an-app-for-that/

By Dr. Becker

Banfield Pet Hospital recently released their State of Pet Health 2012 Report, and the news isn’t good. In fact, it’s extremely troubling.

Chronic diseases in cats and dogs have risen dramatically over the last five years.

The report is a compilation of medical data from about 2 million dogs and over 400,000 cats that visited a Banfield hospital in 2011. Some of the disturbing findings:

• Overweight and obesity increased in dogs by 37 percent, and in cats by a stunning 90 percent
• Arthritis increased 38 percent in dogs and 67 percent in cats
• Almost half of arthritic dogs and more than a third of arthritic cats are also overweight
• Nearly half of diabetic dogs and cats are overweight
• Forty percent of dogs with hypertension and 60 percent with hypothyroidism are overweight

Banfield also conducted a survey of 2,000 dog and cat owners to see what steps they were taking to keep their pets healthy. Survey answers revealed that less than 40 percent of dog owners and only a quarter of cat owners planned to seek advice from a veterinarian to manage their pet’s health condition.

Your Fat Pet is (or will soon be) a Sick Pet

Clearly, overweight and obesity in pets today is both its own disease and the root cause of many other diseases that develop as the result of too much weight.

I wish more pet owners understood the consequences of letting their dog or cat get fat. I find it hard to believe most pet parents would continue to overfeed, feed the wrong foods, and under-exercise their companion animals if they realized they were destroying their pet’s health.

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