History of Pet Foods
Pet food has been commercially produced since the late 1800s. James Spratt, an electrician from Ohio, is credited with observing dogs in London being fed ship's biscuits while he was there to sell lightning rods.
A ship's biscuit, or hardtack (a more modern slang term for ship biscuit is "dog biscuit"), is a cracker made of flour, water, and salt. It was baked hard to withstand long periods-sometimes years-of storage and harsh travel conditions. It was generally softened by being put in coffee, water, or whiskey. Hardtack that was fed to soldiers during the Civil War was still leftover for the Spanish-American War 12 years later. Presumably, if sailors were feeding it to the dogs, they had no need for it themselves.
Until that time, dogs had been fed table scraps and other foods from the human plate. Commercially sold meat for animals was available up through the early 1900s. People in the city primarily bought horse meat-unsuitable for human consumption-from street vendors to feed their dogs and sometimes their cats. Thus, dogs (and occasionally cats) had been fed for a long time before the rise of commercial pet food.
New research suggests that dogs were first domesticated between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago in Europe. The same study finds that modern dogs have little to do with modern wolves, instead descending from another wolf-like animal that is now extinct. Surprisingly, researchers did not find a population of modern wolves that could have given rise to today's dogs. In fact, modern dogs have more genetic similarities with ancient wolves than with those seen today. According to Olaf Thalmann, a researcher at Finland's University of Turku who led the study, "It's quite likely that the population of wolves that gave rise to modern dogs does not exist anymore." This may also help explain why, through domestication, dogs have been bred to consume both meat and starch in their diet.
So, where does that leave us when it comes to dog food?
For about 1/156th of their existence, dogs have been fed a processed food made exclusively for them. After Spratt, several formulas emerged, and by around 1890, pet food was being manufactured in the United States. Most of these were biscuit-type foods, and the iconic Milk-Bone brand began manufacturing in 1908. After World War I, canned horse meat was added to dog food lines.
Cat food and canned food dominated pet food sales up until World War II. However, during the war, metal (tin) was rationed, and pet food was classified as "non-essential," making canned pet food unavailable. As a result, production shifted, and by 1946, dry food represented 85% of the market. In the late 1950s, the modern process of extrusion was introduced, allowing manufacturers to create a lighter, larger kibble, giving rise to dog food as we know it today.
Today, well over forty national pet food manufacturers operate in the United States, offering countless brands to consumers.
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