FW: Re: Animal By Products in feed

[Kathy Copeland <ponyup1@pacbell.net>]

Subject: FW: Re: Animal By Products in feed

Doesn't sound "cranky" to me, just shot full of darn good, well based,
statistically proven, educational facts.   Keep it coming Susan.  I just got
to say "YOU GO GIRL"!!!!!!!!!!!
Kath

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Garlinghouse [mailto:suendavid@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 8:03 PM
To: ridecamp@endurance.net; stacy.a.berger@intel.com
Subject: RC: Re: Animal By Products in feed

> Now my horses - that is entirely different.  Horses are herbivores, ie
vegan >vegatarians!  Even when starving, I don't believe a horse will eat
the >deceased members of its herds...
> dogs will, as will humans.  Horses should not be eating animal by
products, >in my opinion, because they are not designed to do so by mother
nature.

They don't have the protease enzymes capable of adequately breaking down
animal tissues such as striated muscle or organs, true.  But they digest and
absorb animal fats just fine.  And the equine digestive tract is also not
'designed' to consume grain products---but they will if requested to do so,
and can utilize the nutrients just fine as long as we don't push the
boundaries beyond which the digestive tract can handle.  Which is exceeded
all too often, thus the nutrition-related diseases such as grain founder,
cecal acidosis, colic, gas colic, etc etc...there's not one clinical case of
disease being caused by the 'unnatural' ingredients people are getting all
worked up about, yet thousands of horses are treated annually due to poor
nutrition based on feeds people think are 'natural' and therefore harmless.
WRONG.


>  Feed companies are looking at the profits
> they can make, and really don't care about the nutrition goals for your
horse.  >They just don't want to get sued.

Then can you point out and explain in detail which ingredients on a feed tag
are detrimental to your horse?  I don't mean using opinion or quotes from
the National Enquirer, I mean something that anyone can point at and say
'this ingredient will make my horse sick, in the concentrations as provided,
and here's how it will affect him and here's the physiological mechanism.'
Sorry if anyone finds this "cranky", but there's way too much hysteria over
"unnatural" ingredients in a bag of horse feed from people who simply have
uneducated opinions which are being presented as scientific fact.

It is true that the (premium) feed companies find it easier to formulate and
manufacture a high-quality feed rather than throw just anything into a bag
and leave themselves open to liability lawsuits.  That's just good business.
But it's unfair to categorically label everyone in the feed industry as evil
tycoons chortling over hordes of gold without another thought in the world
about your horse.  I know more than one or two extremely qualifed
nutritionists that formulate these rations and they put alot of damn hard
work into trying to come up with diets that provide what the customer wants
as well as good nutrition for the horse.

Speaking only for what I see going on at Colorado State (and its not
exclusive to CSU), there's a pretty fair chunk of change coming into for
research grants in areas of how nutrition can affect specific disease
states, and most of those studies *don't* directly benefit the feed
companies.  Turns out that fat and soluble fiber is beneficial in regulating
blood glucose in diabetic dogs?  Fine, Science Diet will use that data and
formulate a ration that contains fiber for clients that have diabetic dogs.
Turns out (very recently) that an arginine-purified diet will reduce the
growth rate of some types of neoplasia?  Well, there isn't enough of a
market for Eukanuba to formulate that specific a ration, but boy howdy, the
human medicine people are sure jumping up and down over it.  Last year,
every vet student in the country got handed a $125 reference text on small
animal clinical nutrition written by the best university nutritionists in
the country, paid for by Science Diet.

No, I don't work for a feed company, nor do I get any of my direct research
funding from them (Purina did donate free bags of feed to the participants
in my study last summer, but there were no strings attached to it---if there
had been, I wouldnt have accepted, as my opinions arent for sale).  Last
summer, an independent research foundation funded a pretty expensive
research project that I headed up trying to find out why some endurance
horses crash metabolically.  A few people wanted to know what's in it for
the foundation that paid for it, and the answer is nothing.  Nada.  Zip.
Guess what, people, sometimes research happens for no other reason other
than it needed doing, and profit isn't in the equation.

Sorry if this sounds 'cranky' to some people on this list, but there's a
hell of a lot of objective data that exists and goes towards disease
treatment and prevention funded by corporations and foundations that don't
derive profit from it.  I don't like seeing unfounded accusations thrown
around without basis, data or even an understanding of digestive physiology,
nutrition or research methodology, regardless of who those accusations are
being thrown at.  Unethical is unethical, people.  Stacy, sorry if this
seems like a flame---I'm angry at ignorance and closed minds, not at you
personally.

Susan G





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