What makes a Dog food manufacturer think they can do better than nature? Long before we had dog food companies we had dogs, eating omnivorous diets and doing just fine. Convenience and consistentcy are the best reason for dry dog food. I'm sure that a dry premium dog food is fine most of the time, but if the melamine poisoning of a few years ago, taught us anything, it's this, don't fool yourself, all that effort and expense on dog food "research", is aimed precisely at the minimal cost of production and the maximum return on investment. Those national commercials really ad to the nutritional value. The big agri-business concerns are about as concerned with your dogs long term welfare, and budget, as Mobil, Exxon, and BP are with your monthly household fuel costs. They both want you to go on living, while expending as much as possible toward their bottom line. I don't feed chicken bones, rib bones, because they splinter, and as George said choking is a real probability, or deer, elk, moose, etc., because I don't want wasting disease nor do I want to help my dogs down that road. You can cook a complete ration for your dog, just like you do for yourself. Now if we can trust the human food supply we'd all be fine. I have done business with several of the biggest names in Pet food, I have extruded my own, I have also had the stuff analyzed. By necessity any dry dog food, with say 30% protien, may in fact, and probably does have meat as it's first ingredient, but ingredients 2-4 will be some kind of grain, oats, oat groats, corn gluten meal, wheat mids, rice bran, ground rice, ground corn, wheat, hominy, and of course the old standby soybean meal, vastly outnumbering the meat value. Meat sources like salmon, turkey, chicken, beef, lamb, are all from not for human consumption sources, may contain feathers, feather meal, downer animals, and organs not thought of traditionally as edible food. Now if you have ever read a hotdog label,and realize what is allowed in those for human consumption, then recognize what goes in pet food is lower on the list! I use dry dog food, but I supplement as much as is practical with human grade cooked meats, mostly burger and chicken, appropriate bones, frozen veges, and brown rice. Learn to read the label, and read between the lines, to what the label actually is saying sometimes by ommision. If the cheapest lamb or salmon is 7.99 per pound at the store, how much lamb or salmon is in a 35-50# bag of dog food, that sells for $40.00 and the retailer makes 27.5% markup , or 14.00 to 8.00 on? Think the manufacturer makes as much as the retailer? You'd be right again. Factor in transportation cost, labor, packaging, advertising, promotion..... how much is left for ingredients? That's why they buy melamine tainted wheat gluten from China, and why we eat some fantastic amount of corn syrup sweetener in pop, rather than sugar, it's not better!!! It's cheaper, it doesn't immediately kill you, and the long term effects are unproven, even if dubious. Any proof will be meaningless, because we and our dogs will be long gone, before that, just like our (it's harmless), chain smoking granparents.
