CRPF asks what's in my food?

Ever wondered what the ingredients on your pets' food really are? Here are some common terms found on petfood labels and an explanation of what they actually mean.

• Meat and animal derivatives – a generic term for animal proteins which avoids having to specify where the meat comes from – it can be any part of the animal. This enables the pet food company to use whatever meat is the cheapest when they make their food – and there’s no way you can tell what it is.

• Derivatives of vegetable origin – sounds unpleasant, is unpleasant! Another loose term used to disguise all manner of hidden ingredients such as vegetable residues and even charcoal!

• EC permitted additives – this term hides a list of over 4000 chemicals, many of which have been banned from human foods due to health concerns, including E110 (sunset yellow) and E102 (tartrazine).

• Low quality proteins – cheap protein sources such as soya are used instead of meat in many pet foods. They are hard to digest and much less suitable than real meat proteins.