Ingredients to avoid in pet food

Be wary of pet foods that have ingredients listed like these: Meal and bone meal; meat by-products; dried animal digest; poultry by-product meal; poultry by-products; digest of poultry by-products; liver glandular meal; chicken by-products; liver glandular meal; chicken by-products; dried liver digest; fish meal; or fish by-products.
These ingredients could mean feathers, hair, slaughter house wastes, diseased meat, dead dogs and cats, sick animals with cancer, toxic products from spoiled foodstuffs, non-nutritive fillers, heavy-metal comtaminants, sugar, pesticides, herbicides, drug residues, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, bacteria and fungi.
Dangerous chemicals added to pet food: Propylene glycol, ammoniated glycyrrhizin, propyl gallate, ethoxyquin, Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), sodium nitrite, Red No.3, Red No. 40, Yellow No.5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, and artificial flavorings.
Besides those chemicals intentionally added to pet food, there are other that sneak in on their own. Chemical contamination of the food chain is becoming a major factor in chronic disease. The chemicals can include: herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, antibiotics, growth stimulants, hormones, tranquilizers, other drugs fed to livestock, heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead), and high levels of fluoride (canned food).
One of the most important changes we can make is in the daily choices about what we feed our pets, as well as ourselves. We can't expect to maintain good health on over-processed, denatured, contaminated foods.