Nutritional and Safety Surveillance Study of Some Puppies' Commercial Dry Foods

Abstract

Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, pet owners fed their pets a homemade food because commercial pet foods were not available. Recently, pet owners have become interested in both quality and safety of foods that they fed their pets, they pay most attention to select a product able to provide optimal nutritional requirement, promote long-term health sustainability, highly palatable and of better economic return. Proximate chemical composition is the primary indicator that could be used for nutritional value evaluation of food since it provides a basic data help in diet formulation, yet it does not concern the palatability and bioavailability of different nutrients. Moreover, water activity (aw) and mycotoxins levels are indicators that should be determined during dry pet food safety evaluation.Water activity can be defined as the water's energy status in a product (unbound or free water) which its value ranges from 0 to 1.0. Water activity is already used since the 1960's in commercial pet foods. Moreover, moisture content provides information concerning product quality, but it cannot be regarded as the effective tool for product quality and safety because it describes the total water amount (both bound and free) without specification separately, and only unbound water is responsible for product microbial contamination and spoilage. Moisture content may be higher than the allowable levels, but if the water activity is adequately low, the microorganisms cannot use the water to maintain their growth. Both moisture and water activity are important measures, but water activity is the only measure which can be considered as the most effective tool providing the most valuable data about product quality and safety. Drying pet food below a critical water activity level can be an effective way for microbial growth control (1) . Baser and Yalcin (2017) carried out a surveillance study on 36 sample of both dog and cat extruded dry food available in Turkish market to evaluate their quality characteristics. They subjected samples to water activity and moisture analysis and found that water activity mean recorded 0.41 and 0.44, moisture content was 5.80% and 6.44% for cat and dog foods respectively. They stated that samples are safe, durable and not susceptible to any distortion.