George of DiPaola Turkey Farm explains the benefits of local, free-range, humanely raised, antibiotic free turkeys to Cosmo the Welsh Corgi at the Abingdon Square Greenmarket in New York City.

Today the ASPCA issued an urgent alert stating that the pet food crisis isn’t over and nobody knows anything, including what’s actually poisoning pets. This follows on the heels of yesterday’s recall of Natural Balance pet foods due to rice protein concentrate contaminated with melamine, the same chemical that led to a nationwide recall of more than 100 brands of cat and dog food produced by Menu Foods last month. In between, Nestle Purina Pet Care pulled a selection of Alpo products off the shelves, and Del Monte recalled several brands of pet treats. The FDA blocked imports of wheat gluten from one company in China as a result, but clearly the problem goes far beyond this incident or ingredient.

If the common conventional foods humans eat are full of pesticides, drugs and hormones, what can we possibly expect from ingredients deemed “unfit for human consumption” that regularly go into commercial dog foods, even when they’re not tainted? Sabine Contreras has created an excellent resource in The Dog Food Project, offering label information 101 and specific ingredients to avoid. I’ve been reading a lot of suggestions for making your own dog food at home, but who has the time or inclination to cook every meal for themselves, much less their pets?

When Cosmo was a pup, he ate Iams and Eukanuba, two of the “premium” Proctor & Gamble brands by Menu Foods. He had all sorts of health issues, and thinking diet might have something to do with it, we went on a search to find something better.

The quest was fulfilled when we discovered The Honest Kitchen, which offers several formulations of 100% human-food-grade dehydrated raw pet food. Before it was available in New York stores, Lucy Postins, the lovely founder, used to pack each Internet order with a handwritten thank you. Now the products are widely available nationwide.

What a thrill to open the first pack of Force — rather than the usual unidentifiable glop or pellets, I could actually recognize individual ingredients: USDA chicken, organic sweet potatoes, organic celery, organic flax seed, and more. When you add water, it looks and smells like a hearty chicken stew. After a while on the new food, his weight normalized, his coat went from flaky to glossy, his health problems (and copious gas) disappeared. He’s more healthy and energetic now at nine years old than he was at four.

One advantage of dehydrated food is that you can give your dog the benefits of a minimally processed raw diet without having to deal with the safety concerns of storing and handling raw meat. (There are no bones in The Honest Kitchen’s recipes, only muscle meat, so you don’t have to worry about that either.) Another advantage is that it takes up little space or weight, making it ideal for travel and resulting in less packaging waste.

Ideal Bite points out other ways The Honest Kitchen shows they care about conserving energy and championing animal rights. To be sure, I would prefer no animals were killed to feed mine, and at the very least I could certify that any who were had humane treatment and a happy life. But this is the very best dog food I’ve found yet.

The Honest Kitchen Dog Food is wholeheartedly Emily (and Cosmo) approved.

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