by Matthew Tyler Funk

Created on: September 23, 2009

Cancer is the leading cause of death among dogs. It is estimated that one third to one half of the human population in the United States will contract cancer during their lifetimes. A full one half of American dogs will die from one form of cancer or another.

Cancer in dogs, like cancer in humans, is often caused by ingested or environmental toxins, especially in cases of long term exposure to repeated doses of dangerous synthetic chemicals - doses which are not immediately fatal. While it may take some much needed systemic social changes to get the cancer rate in human Americans down, we can as individual pet owners at least give our dogs as good a shot at a cancer free life as we ourselves have.

To find out how we can achieve that we need to think about what the differences are between how well humans and pets are taken care of in this country. I think the most obvious shortfall of compassion for dogs in this country is represented in what they are usually fed; commercially produced, ultra-processed dry kibble; which most people would not consider fit for human consumption.

In fact, most commercially produced dog food is more nutritionally fit for a human being's consumption than it is for a dog's. The first ingredient in most dry commercial dog foods is either corn or wheat; neither of which dogs can digest! On top of that they're two crops that are saturated in synthetic chemical pesticides and grown in synthetic chemical fertilizer, just like most human food is. So for most kibbles, the majority of the ingredients are providing no nutritional value to the dog, yet dosing him or her with synthetic chemicals. At least if you were eating it instead of the dog you might be able to salvage some portion of the nutritional content in that corn or wheat after it's been through all that processing and failed quality inspections on its way to becoming kibble rather than some product for human consumption. Often there are other grains, beans or vegetables in the dog food. Dogs cannot digest any part of grains or beans, except to expel as much of it as possible into fecal matter, and it's debatable whether or not dogs can benefit from eating vegetables; they are not meant to be omnivores; their short digestive tracks were not meant for it.

In addition, almost always what little meat there is in a dog food product is some kind of meat byproduct rather than any actual meat, and it comes from the waste products that can't be sold to humans from animals that are pumped

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