Linky - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02pet-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
They Eat What We Are
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Single Page Share
DiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink
By FREDERICK KAUFMAN
Published: September 2, 2007
I had been told that in the basement of the animal-science laboratory building at the University of Illinois, Dr. George Fahey kept a colony of strange-looking dogs. At Fahey’s orders, each of the dogs had undergone a surgical procedure to string a length of tubing from its intestinal tract to a clear plastic spout that stuck out its side. Fahey, a professor of animal and nutritional sciences, could open a spout by hand, fill a bag with whatever happened to ooze out and calculate how much the dog had digested before whatever it had not digested could move farther through its body. The plastic tubing was inserted in the ileum — the exact spot where food absorption ends and fermentation by the microflora and bacteria of the lower bowel begins. Given a large enough sample of any dog food, George Fahey could calculate how much vitamin or mineral or fat or sugar would enter a dog’s bloodstream and how much would be irretrievably lost. Fahey has spent his career investigating the metabolism of domestic animals, and his research has helped define the nature of pet food.
Skip to next paragraph
Catherine Ledner
In addition to his dog colony, Fahey supervised a number of other nutrition laboratories in the university’s department of animal sciences, and for the most part his workaday hardware consisted of the various contrivances necessary to measure how much food a pet might or might not digest. Thus the baroque collections of viscometers, desiccators and pulverizers, the vials brimming with dog excreta laced with acid, the racks of test tubes filled with cat urine, the containers of canine and feline gastric fluid and the retorts of dog and cat blood. The largest of his labs contained a walk-in refrigerator holding glass jars of secret-coded dog and cat diets, experimental feeds of the future that in their present states resembled nothing more than heaps of brown dust. Piled nearby were stacks and stacks of the commercial pet foods the researchers give to animals in the control groups of their experiments — brands Fahey did not want specified in this article.
I had come to Urbana-Champaign to tour Fahey’s nutrition laboratories and to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of the canine- and feline-nutrition business. I had geared myself up to see those plugged dogs in the basement, but first we had to spend an hour or so strolling the upper floors of offices and laboratories. As we did, Fahey outlined the evolution of the canine habitat, from the wild to the barnyard to the front yard to the front porch, then from the front porch to the living room, from the living room to the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the bed — and under the sheets. He described how, to people who live alone or couples without children, a dog or a cat becomes an object of love. And an object of love must be civilized.
Civilized means different things to different people, and it does not necessarily have anything to do with a pet’s nutritional requirements. Dogs can get along just fine on a daily ration of corn and soybeans. “That’s about the cheapest diet you could put together,†Fahey said, and it provides all the vitamins, minerals, protein, fat and carbohydrates a dog needs. But it wouldn’t sell to broad segments of the modern market.
“People buy diets on the basis of two things,†Fahey said. “The first is palatability. You put it on the floor and the dogs clean up the bowl.†He lifted a pencil from a desk and held it in the air. The second thing, he explained, is the appearance of the stool. “It should be half as long as this pencil, picked up as easily as this pencil, Ziplocked — and away we go.†He added, “We have to have that if they’re keeping the dog in the condo on the 34th floor and they have a white carpet.†All the more so if the dog is in bed, under the sheets.
The reason Fahey has spent his scientific career investigating all manner of starch, carbohydrate and fiber, the reason he has put tubes inside dogs to analyze what they have digested before they have finished digesting it — that reason suddenly became clear: George Fahey has been confronting the myriad challenges of controlling canine bowel movements. Premium dog foods contain at least 30 percent protein and 20 percent fat, he said. “Do we need to feed that much? No. But this way, you have a total tract digestibility of 88 percent, which is good if you don’t want that dog to go in your house when you’re ut for the day. A corn-soy diet can’t do that. The dog can’t hold it.â€
They Eat What We Are
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Single Page Share
DiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink
By FREDERICK KAUFMAN
Published: September 2, 2007
I had been told that in the basement of the animal-science laboratory building at the University of Illinois, Dr. George Fahey kept a colony of strange-looking dogs. At Fahey’s orders, each of the dogs had undergone a surgical procedure to string a length of tubing from its intestinal tract to a clear plastic spout that stuck out its side. Fahey, a professor of animal and nutritional sciences, could open a spout by hand, fill a bag with whatever happened to ooze out and calculate how much the dog had digested before whatever it had not digested could move farther through its body. The plastic tubing was inserted in the ileum — the exact spot where food absorption ends and fermentation by the microflora and bacteria of the lower bowel begins. Given a large enough sample of any dog food, George Fahey could calculate how much vitamin or mineral or fat or sugar would enter a dog’s bloodstream and how much would be irretrievably lost. Fahey has spent his career investigating the metabolism of domestic animals, and his research has helped define the nature of pet food.
Skip to next paragraph
Catherine Ledner
In addition to his dog colony, Fahey supervised a number of other nutrition laboratories in the university’s department of animal sciences, and for the most part his workaday hardware consisted of the various contrivances necessary to measure how much food a pet might or might not digest. Thus the baroque collections of viscometers, desiccators and pulverizers, the vials brimming with dog excreta laced with acid, the racks of test tubes filled with cat urine, the containers of canine and feline gastric fluid and the retorts of dog and cat blood. The largest of his labs contained a walk-in refrigerator holding glass jars of secret-coded dog and cat diets, experimental feeds of the future that in their present states resembled nothing more than heaps of brown dust. Piled nearby were stacks and stacks of the commercial pet foods the researchers give to animals in the control groups of their experiments — brands Fahey did not want specified in this article.
I had come to Urbana-Champaign to tour Fahey’s nutrition laboratories and to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of the canine- and feline-nutrition business. I had geared myself up to see those plugged dogs in the basement, but first we had to spend an hour or so strolling the upper floors of offices and laboratories. As we did, Fahey outlined the evolution of the canine habitat, from the wild to the barnyard to the front yard to the front porch, then from the front porch to the living room, from the living room to the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the bed — and under the sheets. He described how, to people who live alone or couples without children, a dog or a cat becomes an object of love. And an object of love must be civilized.
Civilized means different things to different people, and it does not necessarily have anything to do with a pet’s nutritional requirements. Dogs can get along just fine on a daily ration of corn and soybeans. “That’s about the cheapest diet you could put together,†Fahey said, and it provides all the vitamins, minerals, protein, fat and carbohydrates a dog needs. But it wouldn’t sell to broad segments of the modern market.
“People buy diets on the basis of two things,†Fahey said. “The first is palatability. You put it on the floor and the dogs clean up the bowl.†He lifted a pencil from a desk and held it in the air. The second thing, he explained, is the appearance of the stool. “It should be half as long as this pencil, picked up as easily as this pencil, Ziplocked — and away we go.†He added, “We have to have that if they’re keeping the dog in the condo on the 34th floor and they have a white carpet.†All the more so if the dog is in bed, under the sheets.
The reason Fahey has spent his scientific career investigating all manner of starch, carbohydrate and fiber, the reason he has put tubes inside dogs to analyze what they have digested before they have finished digesting it — that reason suddenly became clear: George Fahey has been confronting the myriad challenges of controlling canine bowel movements. Premium dog foods contain at least 30 percent protein and 20 percent fat, he said. “Do we need to feed that much? No. But this way, you have a total tract digestibility of 88 percent, which is good if you don’t want that dog to go in your house when you’re ut for the day. A corn-soy diet can’t do that. The dog can’t hold it.â€
