Pet food safety concerns raise supervision questions

Not too long ago, pet owners would usually feed their animals imported pet food and reserve domestic brands for strays. Today, though, home-produced pet food ranks top of the sales charts of various e-commerce websites.

However, a series of recent reports have dealt a blow to people's hard-earned confidence in local brands.

According to a report by Central China Television, serious quality issues were found in pet food sold in Xingtai in Hebei Province, a major manufacturing site.

Labels stated "high-quality ingredients" and "real meat," yet prices seemed much lower than cost. Some dog food was just 100 yuan (US$14) for 20 kilograms. Usually the price of dog food ranges between 30 and 200 yuan per kilogram.

The quality of pet food differs in the content of protein and fat. To save costs, some manufacturers are using fake ingredients as replacements, such as bone powder for fresh meat and corn bran for corn. As some of the replacements may cause diarrhea, some manufacturers are said to have been adding montmorillonite powder, a type of antidiarrheal medicine to the foods.

Xingtai's Nanhe District has launched an investigation into the pet food production and sales industry.

Yang Yanxiu, a vet in Jiangsu Province, said his clinic sees cats and dogs falling sick because of food issues almost every week.

"Most suffer from digestive system diseases with symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea or soft stool. Some have more serious problems such as liver or kidney damage," he said. "I also do free consultation online and from time to time people would ask about pet food, like if a certain brand is safe or not. It is problem that we need to pay attention to."

China has a quality standard for pet food. In 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a regulation titled "Measures for the Administration of Pet Feed," which filled the gap in the production, supervision and management of pet feed enterprises.

However, low-quality, or even fake pet food, is probably still on the market because the regulation is not compulsory, more a guideline. Most local governments have not included pet food manufacture in their regular inspection checks.

With the number of household pets in China rising from around 58 million in 2020 to nearly 88 million in 2023, the pet food market is also growing rapidly.

Most domestic pet food brands are relatively new and their number has also been growing in the past two years.

To forge a healthy market proper management and supervision is necessary. The government should formulate national mandatory standards for pet foods, and remove from shelves those products that do not meet the standards.

Regular inspections need to be carried out at pet food manufacturers to crack down on false labeling of ingredients and production dates.

Only by establishing a more comprehensive supervision system and formulating industry standards with mandatory force can the quality of pet food be raised.

Consumers' trust in the market is conditional, and if the safety issue remains unsolved, consumers may again turn to imported pet food and lose trust in domestic products.