It doesn’t seem that long ago that there were only one or two pet foods on the shelves that labelled themselves as ‘Holistic’… now there are many, and even one that implies there are holistic pets!

So what do manufacturers mean by ‘Holistic’ or indeed ‘Natural’ and are there any regulations governing these products?

It’s difficult to know where to begin, other than looking at the dictionary definition of ‘Holistic’

• ‘…dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part’
• ‘…Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.’
• ‘…relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts (holistic medicine attempts to treat both the mind and the body) ‘

Let’s look at how Pet Food brands attempt to explain what they mean by holistic.

Nutro have a holistic food, but omit to define what they mean, other than stating that the food is ‘A unique formula promoting better overall well being’

The Natural Dog Food Company offer what they say is ‘ THE FIRST CERTIFIED HOLISTIC DOG FOOD OF ITS TYPE’ but don’t define ‘Holistic’ other than by associating it with all natural ingredients.

Eagle Pack Foods, we are told ‘pioneered holistic nutrition in the 1980′s, by engineering a way to make a meat meal based food, removing soy from the formulas and meat meals to replace corn as the first ingredient’

Burns Pet Nutrition talk about ‘a holistic approach to health and nutrition’ and their founder John Burns links his approach to Holistic Medicine, stating that ‘The objective of Holistic Medicine is to follow a lifestyle which provides the conditions for the body to maintain a healthy, stable condition. The most important and simplest way of promoting that process is through the choice of food.’

It would seem then that by ‘Holistic’ we’re talking about a food that is made with good quality, easily digested, hypo-allergenic and natural ingredients and has a positive effect on general wellbeing, although individual companies might argue their own particular emphasis. There would seem to be no discernible difference between the use of the words ‘natural’ or ‘holistic’. The key point here I feel is the emphasis on well being, and the choice of ingredients is crucial; a food made with cheap cereal and animal by-products is unlikely to have the same health benefits as one made from higher quality single source meat and cereal components.

The simple fact is that there appears to be no rules and regulations, as far as I am aware as to how these foods are marketed, and this is maybe why there seems confusion even among manufacturers as to what they mean by ‘Holistic’

AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials) has suggested a pet food definition for ‘natural’ as ‘of or pertaining to a product wholly comprising ingredients completely devoid of artificial or manmade substances including, but not limited to, synthetic flavors, colors, preservatives, vitamins, minerals, or other additives, whether added directly to the product or incidentally as a component of another ingredient.’

It has to be said that most so-called Holistic products in the UK use commercial and manufactured vitamin and mineral mixes to ensure that the food contains a consistent nutritional balance of these essential nutrients. Some however do contain natural sources of vitamins and minerals, which would seem to be where AAFCO would like natural products to be.

There are, however some who warn against this, based on inconsistencies in the natural alternatives. Burns pet Nutrition state ‘Natural ingredients, by definition, are very unlikely to contain consistent quantities of these nutrients (e.g. due to seasons, weather, soil type, etc) therefore, supplementation with exact quantities is necessary in order to avoid chronic deficiencies or toxicities…For example, seaweed can contain high levels of magnesium which interferes with the uptake of zinc and copper from the diet. Also, in order to meet the minimum levels of less prevalent nutrients such selenium; you would need to add high quantities of seaweed, which could in turn lead to toxic levels of other nutrients, such as iodine.’

At the end of the day, it is up to the consumer to make the choice of pet food that best fits in with their lifestyle and food ethic. Marketing managers are very good at targeting trends in the food industry and applying those to the pet food market!

The author, who originally trained as a food technologist has, in his time owned dogs, cats, hamsters and birds, sold pet food and spent the past decade marketing it. Now down to one cat, one dog and running Pet Food Choice, a website full of information on pet food choices, money-saving ideas and much more - http://www.pet-food-choice.co.uk

From a one hundred and forty dollar wedding dress for dogs that is sold online to a ten thousand pound deluxe rabbit hutch that one Norfolk based owner made for his pets, the lengths that some people go to, to keep their beloved pets happy is starting to entering the realms of the ridiculous. But whilst forking out for your dog to tie the knot with the puppy next door is really not going to improve the life of your pet in any way, there are some luxury pet supplies that do have benefits for their health, happiness and wellbeing.

Every pet owner wants the best for their pet, be it a dog, a cat or something more exotic. Many people come to see their pets as family members and will buy them the best possible goods that they can afford. However when it comes to pet supplies, simply buying the most expensive option every time can lead to a lot of money wasted, which is money that could otherwise be spent on the little luxuries that actually do make a difference to the life of your pet.

Feeding time is a prime example. Your cat or dog really does not care if it is eating from a bowl made out of plastic or hand crafted from diamond encrusted gold. In fact, your pet probably has not even noticed the difference. They just want the food that is inside so do not splash out on a luxury bowl if it means you can only afford to fill it with cut price food.

Pet food is one area where your pet will really reap the benefits of you spending a little bit extra. Just as with humans, pets need to eat a balanced and healthy diet that includes a variety of vitamins and minerals to ensure long term health. Penny pinching on cat and dog food now can lead to very serious illnesses such as arthritis in the future that, if diagnosed too late, no amount of money will be able to cure. Opt for high quality, brands that offer natural ingredients and use dry foods only as treats or a side dish, never as the main diet.

Recently, the popularity of dog coats and other pet clothing has skyrocketed but whilst you may think Felix looks great in his new tweed jacket the truth is that it probably does not provide any more warmth than a cheaper coat and your pet certainly will not treat it more carefully. Animals have a thick coating of fur that keeps them warm and are usually more than happy to venture outside in cold weather without a coat. However if you are particularly worried about keeping your pet warm, for example if it is quite an old dog or it is ill, buy the coat with the thickest padding, not the one with the glitziest trim.

Furniture is another of the many pet supplies where owners are faced with options ranging from bargain to blowout. It is well known that dogs and cats love to scratch at and rip up furniture, unless you are happy to see that velvet dog sofa you spent your whole pay cheque on with a lovely big tear in the side after three months, it is wiser to stick to standard options. However, orthopaedic furniture such as memory foam beds cost more than your average dog or cat basket, but has been specifically designed to alleviate pain and discomfort in pets with arthritis and other joint conditions. They may not look so glamorous but your pet is going to be far more comfortable, happy and healthy, so when it comes to orthopaedic furniture always go for the best that you can buy.

To summarise, there are many pet supplies on the market ranging from the most basic to the downright absurd, but do not be taken in by appearances when it comes to buying luxury cat supplies or overpriced dog supplies. If you really love and want the best for your pet, its health and happiness should be your two main priorities, which means buying products that have some genuine benefit regardless of what they look like. Your cat or dog can tell the difference when you swap from basic to gourmet food, but believe me, they will not even notice that crystal studded collar.

Leah Williams writes for Petmeds. Petmeds are an online retailer of pet supplies from medicines to shampoos. They have cat supplies, dog supplies and many more. Petmeds only dispenses genuine UK licensed drugs and are regulated by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD).

Guinea pigs are adorable social small animals and owning one can be fun, but at the same time they create huge responsibility requirements. Like rabbits, their teeth grow continuously through their lifetime and therefore they have a constant urge to gnaw at objects with wooden surfaces. Guinea pigs also require balanced diets, enriched with their daily nutrient requirements.

Speak to your vet or pet food retailer about a feeding plan formulated to ensure that your piggie receives all the dietary requirements needed to maintain a proper digestive system, dental health and social relations. Seek out a manufacturer that provides a variety of food products, formulated to satisfy the requirements needed for guinea pigs to achieve physical growth.

One of the leading guinea pig food products offered in the UK is contains a Herbage and Forage meal plan, which contains vital nutrients needed to maintain good dental health. The company offers several Herbage brands such including Herbage with dandelion and marigold, Herbage with chamomile and Herbage with birch bark so your pet can be offered variety at each feeding time. The dust is extracted from these products before packaging, to avoid causing respiratory problems to your pet.

Nuggets can also be offered to add variety to your pet’s meals but make sure that it is fibre rich and not muesli based because this is packed full of sugar. Look for nuggets that contain added vitamins, prebiotics and minerals which help to maintain a healthy coat, eyes and skin.

Fresh greens are also ideally fed to these small pets, because they provide required nutrients and also provide a dietary variety for your pet. Wash the greens thoroughly, to avoid causing problematic digestive problems. Spinach, broccoli, carrot tops and tomatoes are great sources of greens fed to guinea pigs. Some greens to avoid include tomato leaves, rhubarbs potato and potato tops.

Water forms an essential part in a guinea pigs everyday life; these small animals can be rather clumsy and they can scatter their waste all over and therefore, the chances of water contamination are high. Ensure that you check your pet’s water trough about 3 times daily and regularly clean the water trough. If possible, use heavy water containers that cannot be toppled over or suspend the containers above ground level.

Your pet’s health depends on you and as a responsible guinea pig owner you need to understand his dietary requirements and feed him a fibre rich diet that will promote a long and healthy life.

Burgess Excel is the UK’s Number One Vet Approved Guinea Pig Food. Visit Burgess Pet Care to find out more or to buy online.

In the UK you can buy a 15kg bag of dog food for £9.99, or you could dig deeper into your wallet and pay £41 for another brand. So why should we pay up to 400% more for a bag of food – is it justified?

Well, I’m sure there are any number of reasons why one bag of food is more expensive than another, but I’m going to suggest a few possibilities which might make a difference to the price you pay for pet food (and this is true both for cat and dog food because the brand owners are the same)

First and foremost, and this is putting my cynical hat on, you’re paying what you are because the brand owner has decided that this is what you are prepared to pay for their pet food. The marketing department have done their research, millions have been spent on advertising and creating the right image, they’ve built up a degree of trust in the eyes of the consumer and now you’ve got to pay for that!

Where’s my evidence you might ask? Well, let’s take a couple of examples and not from the extremes. Here’s two lists of ingredients:

 

Product 1

Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, vegetable protein extracts, oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, yeasts. Contains EEC permitted antioxidants, colourant and preservative.

Product 2

Wheat, Meat Meal, Maize, Oils & Fats, Linseed, Beet Pulp, Peas, Lucerne, Vitamins & Minerals. Added Citrus, Yeast and Yucca. Contains EEC permitted antioxidants, colourant and preservative.

 

Not a lot of difference in the ingredients, but Product 1 comes from a multinational with a marketing budget of millions to pay for, and it costs £25 for a 15kg bag. Product 2 costs £9.99 for 17kg. The brands are Pedigree and Wagg. I rest my case!

1) Do ingredients make a difference to cost?

Obviously there’s going to be a difference in ingredients used (or we would hope so!) but can this account for such a difference, and does it matter? Let’s look at a couple of examples. Firstly a typical bag of Eucanuba at £41.99 in the UK.

 

Ingredients

Chicken: (>20%), maize, wheat, barley, sorghum, animal fat, fish meal, dried beet pulp, poultry meal, dried whole egg, brewer’s dried yeast, potassium chloride, sodium chloride, linseed, DL-methionine, glucosamine HCl, chondroitin sulphate, salt, sodiumhexametaphosphate

 

Now let’s compare with Gilpa Kennel at £12.39

 

Ingredients

Wheat, poultry, maize, wheatfeed, poultry digest, poultry fat, whey powder, soya oil, yeast, mixed herbs, extract of New Zealand green-lipped mussel, yucca extract, minerals, trace elements and vitamins, including zinc chelate. With EEC permitted antioxidants.

 

Obviously the consumer has to make an informed opinion as to which is better for their pet, but essentially these are both wheat and maize based foods with chicken/poultry as the meat source. Both offer complete nutrition based upon current scientific knowledge with broadly similar analysis.

More ‘natural’ and often more expensive foods will tend to use cereals other than wheat (rice typically) and maybe a single source of meat protein (chicken, duck, fish or lamb are most common) added as meat meal, and may be naturally preserved with vitamin E or similar. These types of food, which can be broadly classified as more hypo-allergenic are important because some pets suffer from an intolerance to common pet food ingredients so that has to be taken into consideration.

It is a long forgotten fact however, that millions of pets have lived long and healthy lives on simple pet food with none of the fancy additives and supplements that manufacturers are luring us with now. Unfortunately, the trend is for manufacturers to try and get us to spend more by echoing the human food industry – with health claims and any number of ingredients which we wouldn’t normally associate with food.

2) All those fance advertisements: Some companies have amazing advertising budgets, and that spend has to be paid for in the price of the products (where else is it coming from?) 2006 saw the release of the world’s most expensive television pet food advertisement coming in at £1 million to support the Sheba cat food brand.

A Pet food company has broken the boundaries of TV advertising in the UK by becoming the first company ever to fully fund a television programme – on the terrestrial channel ITV. Content of the forthcoming ITV1 factual series Dog Rescue, scheduled to air early Sunday evenings, is to be fully funded by a single advertiser, the Mars, Masterfoods pet foods brand Pedigree.

The Dog Rescue series will cover the activities of two animal re-homing centres, Manchester Dogs Home and The Dogs Trust centre in Harefield, West London. Despite concerns about moving a step closer to product placement in TV programming, the Pedigree brand will not be advertised during the show but it will appear at the beginning and end of commercial breaks.

Sponsorship of premium events like Crufts cost brands such as Pedigree huge sums of money, which consumers are paying for in the price of the food.

3) Research and development: Familiar brands such as Purina, Pedigree, Iams, Hills and Eucanuba which are global brands spend $millions worldwide on research and development, employing hundreds of scientists and veterinarians. This has to be paid for!

4) The impact of the Distribution Chain: Some brand owners are also manufacturers (i.e. Gilpa) so it costs less to get the food to the shops. Others (Burns, Arden Grange etc) rely on a manufacturer making food for them, so already someone else wants a snip out of the profits. As well as the brand owner, there will be wholsalers and of course the retailer wanting their percentage. So it is that a bag of food that costs just a few £ to manufacture ends up costing around £40 in the shops!

5) We love our substitute children! : Yes, pet food manufacturers know that you treat your pet like a child – go on, admit it!

Euromonitor’s research has found that the pet food market has been experiencing a trend towards premium and super-premium products. This stems from the fact that pet owners are increasingly treating their companion as a member of the family (or even sometimes as a partner, in the case of single households) and as such, expenditure on pet food is rising. This trend towards premium products has also been the result of efficient marketing communication by manufacturers about the benefits of prepared pet food and this has contributed to the development of branded premium products first, with private label premium products following suit.

With the pet obesity rate reaching record levels, pet health and pet hygiene proved to be one of the biggest concerns of pet owners in 2006. This has resulted in a raft of new health focused multi-functional foods aimed at improving pet health, with product launches aimed at boosting pet paws, claws, eyes, coats, skin, teeth and even brain power. Key terms included omega 3 and 6, macro-nutrient profile, wheat and gluten-free and hypoallergenic. As pet owners became increasingly aware of the changing nutritional needs of their pets as they age, 2006 saw a great extension to life stage and lifestyle products, once the domain of premium and super-premium products. Even value manufacturers are cashing in on this trend.

At the end of the day of course, the consumer can always vote with their feet and move to a different brand if they feel that they are being ripped off!

The author, who originally trained as a food technologist has, in his time owned dogs, cats, hamsters and birds, sold pet food and spent the past decade marketing it. Now down to one cat, one dog and running Pet Food Choice, a website full of information on pet food choices, money-saving ideas and much more http://www.pet-food-choice.co.uk

Despite the recession, it seems pet owners are not giving up on the welfare of their pets. This even extends to their pet food, and in the UK, it has recently been announced that pet owners are showing an increased willingness to spend extra money on the best food for their dogs and cats in 2009.

The UK – Pet Lovers

In 2008, it is estimated that around 1.7bn pounds was spent on pet food for domestic animals in the UK, and it is easy to see why. Even when times are hard and homeowners are struggling to keep their heads above water with the depressing economic gloom, their pets remain faithfully optimistic by their side. Owners are pouring their love and affection into their pets and rewarding them by spending more on the finer things in life for them, which for most dogs simply means a tasty bowl of dog food. The UK is a nation of pet lovers and this is exemplified by the increased spend on our pets. Of course, most dogs and cats don’t ask for much, and their dinner is probably the thing they most look forward to each day, which is why pets are so refreshing to have around when times are hard. They adore their owners and ask for very little in return.

More Choice; More Scope

Recent news has also highlighted the pet owner’s more responsible approach to their animals, noting that owners are realising the importance of a healthy diet and regular exercise in order to reduce expensive veterinary bills in the future. This all bodes well for the future of our pets and it is refreshing to see people are taking that little bit of extra care over their dogs and cats etc. With sales of pet food in the UK rising considerably over recent months, there is a healthy pet food market out there which owners can trust in. Big names are producing a wide variety of pet foods and making it easy for consumers to purchase these, with a broader use of sales avenues. As the traditional UK pet shops dwindle on the high street, the online community is thriving and there are top brand names in the world of pet food offering their products for sale online, at really reasonable prices. In fact, it is likely that the wider availability of pet foods online in the UK has led to this increase in spend from owners. Buying online makes it easy to re-order and stocking up inevitably saves on postage, as it is a one-off charge.

There is a real sense of puppy love going on in the UK at the moment, and its not just dogs that are feeling the benefit of tastier, better pet food. Cats and rabbits are too, as people are realising that their pets come first and spending on a good brand of pet food really is money well spent.

Author Mark Woodcock is a Webmaster of a wide variety of online specialty shops including a very popular site specialising in Pet Food UK. Visit http://www.burgesspetcare.co.uk/ today.