[silvertail]

When I go shopping for food for myself, I can find meat products from animals that were raised, and killed, in a relatively humane manner. I can buy the meat and eggs of free range chickens, for example. But in terms of dog food, I have found little information on this. Since most dog food consists of a large amount of animal protein, I would like to find a brand that uses meat from animals, that were treated decently while they lived, and that were killed in the most humane manner possible. If anyone can make some suggestions on this, I would be grateful. Ahh, as a further problem with this, we have to feed my dog lamb and rice dog food. Our vet said it was most likely because corn, which is the grain component in most dog foods, upsets her stomach. Anyway, I would be most grateful for any advice on this subject.

Cheers,
Dan

[Aggie]

Blue Buffalo is availible at Petsmart; they don't use it as a selling point I see per se on the website, but all the bags say "free-range lamb," and (thus) they have a lamb and rice formula you may want to look into.

I'm sure you could call & inquire about specific practices.

There are also the ingredient lists for the different foods they produce listed so you can look through those. The link is to the lamb & rice one.

http://www.bluebuff.com/products/dog...ult-lamb.shtml

I think several of the premium dog foods (esp the holistic target-audience) will have ingredients like you are looking for.


http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/ is a good starting place when comparing foods; I don't find it the be-all-end-all of comparison analysis, although many people put a *lot* of stock in this website. It's definitely something to take into consideration if you are looking at a brand which is more or less national and listed.

[Willowy]

A lamb-based food is generally more "humane" than a beef- or chicken- based food. The reason being that lambs are usually raised on pasture, and are not sent to feedlots to finish. Commercially-raised chickens are raised in cramped, dirty poultry confinements, and cattle, though pastured for most of their lives, finish their last 3 months in a nasty, crowded feedlot. So lamb is best for humane conditions. This is for regular brands of dog food, if you specifically look for a free-range chicken dog food or an organic beef dog food, those would probably be best.