And furthermore............. ........
Those are not real life studies. We all know that stress, exercise, and other variables can affect how bodies functions including how it uses food.
So keeping companion animals caged like that is not even a good study to begin with!!
Junk science on junk food!!
I believe I did hear one company (it might of even been Iams) that said they were using feeding trials done with honest to goodness family pets. No animals in cages, animals that were living a LIFE.
I don't think pets should suffer so people can feed them shit. That is suffering with no purpose.
Everybody think about that the next time you pour a bowl of processed food chunks. A dog somewhere is sitting in a cage so your dog can eat crap it shouldn't and some bunk science dude can feel good telling you it is great for him, and some big CEO dude can continue to make money.
This concludes my "feel good" speech for today.
LOL@ feel good speech. I'm not going to agree or disagree in your comments about commercial food being "shit". We've been through this, I honestly don't think you can trust the average human to feed themselves a nutritious diet, much less feed their dogs (or their children for that matter).
I personally am not a big fan of animal research, but there is no realistic alternative for many studies (I'm staying very, very general with this statement on purpose because there are many, many alternatives with others and the most noninvasive proceedure should ALWAYS be the one chosen). The infamily feeding trials were done by both Iams and Purina if I'm not mistaken. I've worked in two hospitals that also did final feeding trials on animals (these were for both prescription and regular diets) The problem with those sort of feeding trials is the innate degree of variability you have with different households. The initial research needs to be done where you can guarantee that the dogs are not getting snuck table scraps or other stuff that so, so many households feed their dogs. The only way to do that is to conduct the research in a laboratory situation. Its not ideal, but its humans that are once again at fault.
I've worked with research animals of a variety of species, from birds to mice and rats to dogs to yucatan minature swine to cattle to llamas and alpacas to horses to nonhuman primates. Of all of those, I really do think a "reasonable" quality of life can be developed in most general instances except for the nonhuman primates. Thats a whole different ballgame that becomes very complex depending on the species. A big key component of it is the quality of the laboratory crew that is hired for the research project. These are the people who are so often overlooked but really are the ones that will give a "normal" life to the animals. I've worked as one of those people as an undergrad and the attitude of the researcher towards the animals are directly reflected by their animal care crew.
I don't know if you know or not, but the thoroughbred and quarterhorse of my wifes are both research lab parolees. The quarterhorse is a pretty complex story, but the thoroughbred was basically an off the track gelding who'd run his life out winning a few hundred thousand. He had laryngeal paralysis, and as a gelding, was basically worthless. He was bought at a surplus acution and from there got taken into my wifes lab, where an experimental surgery was done to correct his laryngeal paralysis. He was also used as a surgical teaching horse for insertion of a coil embolus for gutteral pouch mycosis. This horse spent his time as a research horse, was brushed twice per day, lunged daily, had regular foot care, was given some "carrot/mint/apple time---my wifes term she does with all of the horses in her research---and in all honesty taken better care of in my opinion than a large number of horses I've seen in the private sector. Once the research projects were done, rather than be euthanized, all of the horses in the group this thoroughbred came from were adopted out---we ended up with the thoroughbred--except for one mare, who in all honesty was too dangerous for anyone but the most experienced horse owner tohandle and quite frankly, we couldnt' find that type of owner interested in her. We tried. She was euthanized because of her temperment, not because of lab protocol.
What I'm trying to say is that while animal research may not be unavoidable, the attitude of the researcher and the attitude of the staff of that researcher can make a tremendous amount of difference in the quality of life of the research animals. Does that make sense?