What’s In Your Pet’s Food? A Study of Protein Contamination in Raw Pet Food Products

Abstract

Contamination of raw pet food products with unspecified animal DNA can jeopardize pet safety and waver the customer’s trust in its quality. While raw pet food diets are becoming more popular with pet owners, research and control over protein contamination is below par. Our team took 5 raw meat products (beef, chicken, kangaroo, pork, and sheep) from the local pet food manufacturer, hypothesized to be contaminated. The sample DNA was amplified and quantified using DNA isolation, PCR and gel electrophoresis, and gels were analyzed to determine contamination or lack thereof. We found that beef and chicken products were not contaminated with any of the tested primers’ DNA (beef, chicken, goat, horse, pork, sheep), but kangaroo, pork, and sheep samples showed contamination with bands that had a size predictive of beef DNA (274bp). The kangaroo meat contamination is suspected to be caused by a region of similarity between beef and kangaroo mitochondrial D-loop cytochrome B sequences, which could have led to a false positive. Further research should be done into kangaroo, sheep, and pork raw meat products to get a better understanding of the extent of protein contamination.