Foodservice Staff, Product Labels Best Sources of Allergen Information

Originally published in the May 28, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan 

 

Approximately 30,000 Americans visit the emergency room, and more than 150 die, each year due to allergic reactions to food, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.

 

And there’s no cure, according to the US Food and Drug Administration website. The best thing consumers can do is avoid products that contain the food allergens they have reactions to.

 

That’s where product labeling comes in, said Patricia Batten, manufactured food program associate for the Department’s Food Safety Division.

 

“You’ve got to list your ingredients and if any ingredient is made up of sub-ingredients, you have to list it,” Batten said. “I always tell folks, lay your ingredients on the table. … If the allergens are spelled out in the ingredient statement, you do not have to put an allergen statement.”

 

Take butter, for example. Butter contains milk, so in the ingredient statement, a manufacturer could say, “butter [cream, milk, natural flavoring]” and eliminate the need to have a separate statement on the label saying the product contains milk, she said.

 

Dairy is one of several food allergens, said Jessica Badour, recall outreach specialist for the Food Safety Division. The others are eggs, shellfish, fish, wheat, peanuts, soybeans, sulfites and tree nuts, including chestnuts, brazil nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews and pine nuts. Some food dyes can also cause allergic reactions.

 

Consumers can also be intolerant to foods instead of allergic. Food intolerance refers to an abnormal response to a food or additive, such as digestive problems after eating dairy, according to the FDA. A food allergy, on the other hand, occurs when the body produces a specific immunoglobulin – a protein the immune system uses to identify foreign objects, such as viruses – to a food. Once the food is eaten and binds with this protein, it starts an allergic reaction.

 

If a company does not declare an allergen, the best thing it can do is recall the product, Batten said.

 

“That’s very costly. Years back, Frito-Lay had made some Grandma’s Cookies Chocolate Chip. They forgot to put eggs in the label. They recalled 1.2 million cookies and they just threw them in the landfill,” she said.

 

Badour said recalls can come through in three ways. Companies realize they mislabeled, a consumer calls to complain of a potential mislabeling or inspectors might see possible cross-contamination risks during a facility or process inspection.

 

Some labels will point out that a product is produced in a facility that could cause cross-contamination with allergens, even if a product itself does not contain any.

 

“That statement is really saying that I’m listing all my allergens here, but I may also process something with nuts. There might be traces,” Batten said.

 

When it comes to eating out, restaurant menus do not typically declare allergens. That means it’s up to the foodservice staff to know what goes in the food and be able to relay that to customers at risk for allergic reactions.

 

“Due to the serious nature of food allergies, the current Georgia Food Service Rules and Regulations … requires that the person in charge must demonstrate knowledge of the foods that have been identified as major food allergens and be familiar with the symptoms,” said Chris Rustin, director of the Georgia Department of Public Health Environmental Health Section.

 

Symptoms of a food allergy include allergic reactions, anaphylaxis and even death, he said. It’s also important for foodservice staff to be aware of food allergens, which could be a matter of mortality for some customers. Rustin added that another step foodservice establishments must take is to clean and sanitize equipment, surfaces and utensils that come into contact with raw animal protein allergens, such as shellfish, before being used for other foods to prevent the “inadvertent introduction of an allergen into a product that the allergen was not intended to be added as an ingredient.”

 

“With increased knowledge and understanding … food employees are better suited to inform customers about foods containing a major food allergen to reduce the likelihood of exposure,” Rustin said. 



Southern Foodways Alliance Aims to Study Culture, Issues by Studying Food

Originally published in the May 14, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

John T. Edge, founder and director of Southern Foodways Alliance, has a passion for preserving Southern food – but not as jams or pickles.

 

Instead, his organization preserves Southern food through oral histories, books and documentaries that tell stories not just about food, but the culture that surrounds and inspires it.

 

“At our core we study Southern food culture and we do oral history work, so we go out in the field and interview ‘old guard’ row crop farmers or oystermen still tonging the Apalachicola Bay,” Edge said. “Along the way, by way of those interviews, by way of films we make, we’re creating this crazy quilt portrait of the South through food.”

 

John T. Edge, founder and director of Southern Foodways Alliance, addresses
the audience at a book release event on May 2, 2014, at the Atlanta History
Center. SFA partners with the University of Georgia Press to publish two book
series on food and the best of Southern foodwriting. Photo by Dallas Duncan

Now a Mississippi resident, where SFA is based, Edge visited his home state on May 2 to promote the group’s two book series published through the University of Georgia Press.

 

A more scholarly series, Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People and Place, is designed to teach students how to think and study about the South through food.

 

“People are not intimidated by a scholarly book on food. I know food; I eat it all the time,” said Pat Allen, acquisitions editor for UGA Press. “It’s a much more approachable kind of scholarship.”

 

The second series, Cornbread Nation, looks not just at important historic figures, but at their cultures and how those influenced history, he said.

 

“Cornbread Nation … is kind of a reader that’s done every two years,” Allen said. “Every volume has a guest editor who goes through the previous two years and finds the best writing about Southern foodways. It might be a book about oyster farmers in Apalachicola to African-American funeral food, etc. It’s a really lively thing.”

 

Like studying cultural implications of music or literature, Edge believes food can help explain “complex, multifaceted stories” to understand the South.

 

Take the story of the Allman Brothers and the H&H Café, for instance.

 

“The H&H was run by a woman named Mama Louise Hudson. Mama Louise had been there since the 1950s. … She’s African-American, mostly African-American clientele,” Edge said. “[The Allman Brothers] are country boys from Florida whose mama cooked them fried chicken and collard greens, sweet potatoes and creamed corn and they still craved that food.”

 

The band showed up at Hudson’s back door asking to buy a plate to share. She told them she was going to feed all four of them, Edge said, and a lasting relationship ensued. On the album Idlewild South, the band includes her in the credits: “Vittles: Louise.”

 

“They became fast friends, devoted to one another. … She traveled with them. They got a jumbo jet, they’re flying across the country and Mama Louise is there not only cooking for them, but part of their family,” Edge said.

 

He tells the story not just to talk about Macon icons, but to share an example of how a story based on food says a lot more than how good Hudson’s fried chicken was.

 

“That story is a way to talk about black-white relations, it’s a way to talk about black women as proxy mothers to working class white kids, it’s a way to talk about common diet between black and white,” he said. “It’s really to say if you think about what farmers raise and what Southerners take pride in eating, that’s our great common bond.”

 

And whether they realize it or not, everyone comes from a food culture, Allen said.

 

“It’s an unfamiliar area for most people,” Allen said. “We think of food as such a part of our environment, we don’t really think about it representing part of our culture and our history and why Southerners eat the way they do.”



Saving, Selling Protected Seed Can Land Producers in Hot Water

Originally published in the Feb. 5, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

Blue Suede blueberries are growing in popularity, but producers who save and sell the plants can face criminal charges.

That’s because Blue Suede is one of many cultivars protected by either patents or the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970, deeming them intellectual property of their developers. In the case of Blue Suede, that would be the University of Georgia.

The PVPA was written to increase crop varieties and allow for researchers to recoup development costs, said Terry Hollifield, executive director of the Georgia Crop Improvement Association. Under a PVP, which covers most seed-propagated cultivars, farmers can save enough seed to plant back their acreage, but cannot sell seed. Patented plants’ seed or cuttings, such as turfgrasses, cannot be saved or sold.

“Like blueberry farmers, they can’t go out — unless they have a license — and take cuttings off their blueberry plants and plant 40 acres,” said Brent Marable, plant licensing manager for the UGA Research Foundation.

The idea of protecting plants was to get income streaming back into breeding programs, said James Sutton, assistant commissioner for the Department.

“It costs so much to come up with a new variety and it’s so short-lived. A variety may only last three or four years,” he said. “So all that money going to make this new variety, you don’t reap the benefits, especially if you’re just giving away the seed.”

Producers pay royalties when purchasing protected seed. For instance, if UGA developed the fictitious Soybean U34 and licensed it out to be sold, farmers who purchased U34 seed would pay an extra five cents per pound. The five cents goes back to UGA breeding programs, Sutton said.

Producers sign contracts as well, allowing developers to audit their fields and financials to make sure they’re following the law. However, farmers tend to police themselves, Sutton said.

Universities and companies have legal recourse against those who propagate and sell seed illegally and are caught doing so, though most settle out of court, Hollifield said.

He said the analysis tag on seed bags will note whether a variety is protected or not.

There are limitations on how long patents and PVPA protections last, however, usually between 15 and 18 years.

“If I come up with a Georgia green, great peanut variety … it had a PVP, it had a run of about 15 years. If it had a patent, nobody’s growing it after the patent runs out,” Sutton said. “You have a great new variety and it runs for about four or five years, then something takes its place.”

In essence, it’s like smart phones.

“By the time this one is about to go out,they come out with the iPhone 5,” he said. “It’s the same with seed. By the time the patent’s ready to run out, they’ve come out with a new and improved [cultivar].”

And if a variety remains popular after its patent is up, there’s a chance it will still evolve over years of use. Take Silver Queen Corn, for example.

“Silver Queen isn’t like it used to be,” said Alan Lowman, program director for the Department’s Agricultural Inputs Section. “It’s not because nobody has a vested interest in it — nobody is keeping it true to type. Part of the PVP and patent stuff is that you get what you pay for, that varieties stay true.”

It also helps ensure plants are developed to thrive in the Southeast, since royalties from one plant are being used to spur research on others — like Blue Suede blueberries

“Ten years ago, we’re taking peanut money down to Griffin to help blueberries get going. And blueberries have overtaken peaches," Sutton said. “If [the royalties] hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have the blueberry market like you have now."

Peanut Genome Project to Lead to Faster Development of New Varieties

Originally published in the April 30, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

Now that the peanut genome has been
sequenced, breeders will be able to create
resistant cultivars at a faster pace using
traditional breeding methods. Photo by
Dallas Duncan

Recent breakthroughs in peanut breeding could significantly decrease the time it takes to develop new cultivars.

 

The International Peanut Genome Initiative, of which University of Georgia’s Scott Jackson was chair, completed sequencing the entire peanut genome this spring.

 

“The state of Georgia produces 40 percent of the US peanuts,” Jackson said. “One of the things we wanted to do was accelerate the improvement of peanuts – get better faster and finding varieties of peanuts with improved traits and characteristics and yield we can provide to the farmers.”

 

And one of the best ways to do that, he said, is to understand the genetics of the peanut itself.

 

“The genome sequence gives us a picture of all the genes in the cultivated peanut in one database,” Jackson said. “Now the hope is that we can use this information to make more informed decisions on what genes to move into improved varieties and how to deploy those, how to stack genes and get improved yield and improved disease resistance.”

 

The peanut joins a list of other organisms with sequenced genomes, including the chicken, peach, rice, soybean and even human, which is only slightly larger than the peanut genome. The peanut genome initiative was funded through commodity groups, shellers, growers and packers, he said.

 

Based on genetic studies, breeders can look at which pieces of DNA correlate with a trait. This leads to using the DNA and not a trait to base selection on, said Peggy Ozias-Akins, horticulture professor at the University of Georgia-Tifton campus.

 

“It’s more long-term to actually select based on the trait,” she said. “If you’ve already shown that DNA is associated with resistance to that disease, then you can still make progress in that year selecting lines out of the population that would carry resistance.”

 

Without a sequenced genome, it could take anywhere from 10 to 20 years to determine what genes control certain traits. Jackson hopes that the sequenced peanut genome will cut that time to less than a decade.

 

“Before, a breeder had to grow the plant for a whole season to see if it contained a particular trait,” said Don Koehler, executive director of Georgia Peanut Commission. “Now after the initial cross takes place … he can look for specific markers to know if a gene is present or not.”

 

The actual sequencing process is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, Jackson said.

 

“We take the DNA from a plant and chop it up into very small fragments and we sequence those fragments using machines … then we use computer algorithms to try to put it back together in the correct order,” he said.

 

In other words, Jackson said, it’s as if that jigsaw puzzle was a picture of blue sky.

 

The next step uses more computer calculations to determine where the genes are in that puzzle, and tie the genes to a function, such as disease or drought resistance.

 

“The actual figuring out of what the genes do will take a number of years,” Jackson said. “We’re already making progress.”

 

Some of the major diseases affecting Georgia peanuts are tomato spotted wilt virus, white mold and leaf spot.

 

“By finding resistant gene strains in the peanut, the technology will allow for peanut cultivars that will help enhance production on the farm and save the farmer time and money when treating the disease,” Koehler said.



Candling Certificates Provide Opportunity to Sell Eggs at Farmers Markets

Originally published in the April 16, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

More than 50 Augusta-area producers are now certified egg candlers, thanks to a class on March 27.



Katherine Crossan of Martinez, Ga., holds a commercial chicken egg to a
candling light to check for imperfections such as cracks or blood spots during
a candling class in Augusta, Ga., on March 27. Photo by Dallas Duncan

“This egg candling certificate will allow you, as a backyard producer, the ability to sell your eggs off your farm at other locations such as local farmers markets or local flea markets,” said Greg Manous, the Department’s Food Safety Division sanitarian who taught the course. “This certificate will not allow you to wholesale your eggs to the convenience store down the street or the restaurant down the street.”

 

To do that, he said, producers must go a step further and become licensed egg producers, with their farm and facilities coming under inspection by the Department.

 

During the Thursday afternoon class, participants learned about egg makeup, egg grades and how to properly clean and care for the food product. In order to obtain their certificate, they had to take a written exam, candle several dozen eggs and provide secure and verifiable documentation about their farm operation.

 

The process of candling involves holding eggs up to a special light and examine the egg for imperfections: meat spots, rot, blood spots and cracks, Manous said. Though the eggs participants practice with are commercial grade, he said producers are welcome to bring in a few of their own eggs from home to candle as well – though those will not count toward the certificate.

 

Eggs must be candled within 36 hours, and must be labeled with an expiration date of no more than 45 days from the candling date, he said. The Georgia Egg Law requires producers to refrigerate eggs at 41 degrees or lower, including if the eggs are sold out of a cooler at the farmers market.

 

Egg candling classes are held throughout the state several times per year, Manous said. Most of the attendees are small egg producers with just a handful of chickens – like Katherine Crossan of Martinez, Ga.

 

“I now have eight backyard chickens and I have more eggs than my husband and I need,” she said. “I’m currently giving them away, but I thought it might be nice to have candling class knowledge and if I ever wanted to sell them at a farmers market, I could.”

 

For Angie and Todd Neville of Hephzibah, Ga., the class provided an opportunity to expand their market if need be. Right now, their operation focuses on breeding poultry rather than egg production.

 

“About a year ago, our son Tyler decided he wanted some chickens. It started out with a few chickens and it has progressed from there,” Todd Neville said. “Anything dealing with chickens interests us right now, and we saw this class and thought we should go ahead and get our license just in case we have to get into some eggs.”

 

David Young, president of Savannah River Grange, said spreading the word about services such as the egg candling classes will garner more interest in small farms in the Augusta area.

 

“Augusta’s not considered to be a big agricultural hub, so I just wanted to prove them wrong and say, ‘Hey, we do have a good interest,’” Young said. “Backyard farmers is a movement, it’s not just a fad. People are wanting to grow their own chickens, have their own eggs, grow their own backyard gardens and this is just a good way to help people.”



King of Pops Owners Look to the Land for Business Expansion

Originally published in the Jan. 22, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

King of Pops is the king of Georgia Grown gourmet popsicles. With flavor combinations including blueberry lemongrass, tangerine basil, grapefruit mint and pineapple habañero, the company built a business that thrives on locally sourced products.

 

And it’s about to get a lot more local — co-founders Steven and Nick Carse are hiring a farm manager to help them start growing their own ingredients.

 

King of Pops co-founder Nick Carse mans the store window in Atlanta, Ga.,
on a sunny day in January. The popsicles, already made with Georgia-grown
ingredients, will soon contain elements sourced from around the company's
farm. Photo by Dallas Duncan

They haven’t nailed down a farm location yet, but the brothers have lots of plans for when they do.

 

“We want to do honey, berries, melons, herbs and kind of experiment from there,” Steven Carse said. “With greenhouses, we can push the limits more, possibly do persimmon and cherry.”

 

Once they’ve figured out what plants work, he said the remainder of the farm will focus on one or two crops. But first, they have to do soil testing and figure out which of their ingredients will grow best in the ground.

 

"Herbs will be the quickest thing that we’ll be able to get to and grow a good bit of what we’ll use,” Steven Carse said.

 

The goals of the farm are three-fold: take over the company’s produce composting, grow their own ingredients and continue Tree Elves, a living Christmas tree operation that “rents” potted Christmas trees to families during the holidays, and takes care of them the other 11 months of the year. When the trees get too big to deliver to new families, they will be planted, donated or sold.

 

“We’re both pretty big dreamers and we have pretty high goals of what it could eventually be,” Steven Carse said.

 

King of Pops sells about 500,000 popsicles each year, between its carts, catering and retail sales. Inspirations for the unusual flavor concoctions come from everywhere, including creative cocktails. Roughly 50 percent of the produce, all of the dairy and honey ingredients are locally sourced, Steven Carse said.

 

“We go to the State Farmers Market, we deal with Destiny Organics a good bit. Then we do a lot of kind of really small scale with some of the farmers at farmers markets we attend. We get all our peaches from Peterson, all our milk from Southern Swiss in Augusta,” Steven Carse said. “We shoot for as much local as we can get.”

 

Though the business has only been around since 2010 — the inspiration came years before when Steven and Nick visited their elder brother, an anthropologist, and became enamored with a variety of Latin American fruit-based popsicle — its distributors have already taken note of the growing fan base.

 

Destiny Organics is one such distributor.

 

“We see how popular their products are and how well they’re selling,” Communications Director Ben Pruett said. “I think that they’re able to do something that is very unique and I think that being able to produce their own ingredients could really add to the possibilities of the unique market that they’ve already carved out.”

 

Pruett said he believes King of Pops will be the first Destiny Organics producer that grows its own ingredients for a prepared product.

 

“We kind of have somewhat of a responsibility to be outspoken leaders in this because our business model is so closely tied to this,” Steven Carse said. “Almost as important as the food we’re going to be creating is our ability to familiarize our fans with local food in general, sustainable food and using it as a marketing tool and learning experience.”

Many Factors to Consider When Choosing Food for Felines and Fidos

Originally published in the Jan. 8, 2014, issue

 

By Dallas Duncan

 

Pet foods run the gamut – raw, dry, wet, organic and more – so there’s a lot to choose from when trying to decide what diet is best for the furry friend Santa left under the tree.

 

“Nutritionists believe that ingredients do not matter. What matters is nutrients,” said Dr. Susan Wynn, nutritionist at Blue Pearl Georgia Veterinary Specialists in Sandy Springs, Ga.

 

The one exception is in felines: nutritionists would not recommend vegetarian diets for cats.



Meat and meat meals are the primary sources of protein in dry and wet cat
foods. Because cats are "obligate carnivores," meaning some of their essential
nutrients come from animal proteins, nutritionists do not recommend
vegetarian diets for felines. Photo by Dallas Duncan

 

“Cats are obligate carnivores. They must have animal protein. In the wild, they will die without animal flesh. Animal flesh contains unique amino acids and fats that you cannot get from plant proteins,” she said.

 

Dogs, on the other hand, are omnivores.

 

Two important nutrients in feline diets are the amino acids arginine and taurine, said Associate State Veterinarian Dr. Wendy Cuevas-Espelid. Arginine prevents toxic ammonia buildup in the bloodstream, and without taurine, cats could suffer from blindness, deafness, heart failure and a host of other diseases, she said. For dogs, protein needs vary by breed, age and activity level.

 

“Kittens need large amounts of energy provided by their food. Their energy requirements are about two to three times more than an adult cat. About 30 percent of their energy should come from protein,” Cuevas-Espelid said. “Puppies need to be fed accordingly for growth to be at an average rate, not a maximum rate, for the breed. This helps to prevent skeletal deformities.”

 

She said puppies and kittens should be on a growth formula until they reach adulthood, and adults should be on a maintenance diet. Older pets should eat a senior diet formulated to provide nutrients for aging animals.

 

Cuevas-Espelid said the primary source of protein in canine and feline diets comes from meat or meal.

 

“A byproduct meal just means they throw a lot of scrap pieces together and they grind them up into a flour, or a meal,” said Alan Lowman, Department ag inputs program director. “The fat content will probably be higher because fat is one of those things that’s discarded, but fat is a high-energy compound. It’s going to make that coat look really shiny.”

 

Meat meal, according to the Associationof American Feed Control Officials, is a more concentrated source of protein because it doesn’t contain the same water content as whole meat. It can be added to dry foods to increase protein content.

 

But not all byproducts are created equal, Wynn said. A large pet food company has come under fire in the past for using byproducts, but what blogs might not tell pet owners is that this company’s byproducts are entire chicken carcasses.

 

“That’s about as Paleolithic and natural as you can get,” Wynn said. “There are cheaper companies who use the cheapest parts, feet and head and things like that, because they are cheap.”

 

Because AAFCO regulations do not allow pet food labels to disclose specific byproducts, Wynn recommends pet owners contact companies to learn more about their byproduct ingredients, and said reputable companies will disclose what they use.

 

The concept of byproducts can turn some pet owners to a raw foods diet, but some experts caution that raw or refrigerated foods can be more susceptible to potential foodborne pathogens and mishandling. Pet foods can be recalled because of bacterial contamination, such as Salmonella, said Jessica Badour, recall outreach specialist for the Department’s Food Safety Division.

 

“Anything that comes refrigerated should be properly held at 41 degrees or colder,” she said. “And again, when you’ve got that raw component, there’s just a higher risk that you could cross-contaminate by handling it and touching something else in your kitchen.”

 

Contaminated pet food is a human safety risk as well, as people can get sick from handling it. Badour advises consumers to keep the bags pet food comes in, or cut off the brand name, UPC code and lot code to keep in case that food is recalled.

 

“Studies that have been done on both commercially available and homemade raw protein diets have found a high percentage, 30 to 50 percent, of them contaminated with pathogenic organisms, and up to 30 percent of the dogs fed such diets may shed pathogenic organisms in their stool,” Cuevas-Espelid said, quoting a statement from the American Animal Hospital Association.

 

Because of these potential health risks, it’s recommended to not feed therapy dogs a raw protein diet. These are animals most likely to be in contact with humans who have compromised immune systems and could be more susceptible to illness, Cuevas-Espelid said.

 

Lowman said cooked food and those which has a “kill step” will be less likely to contain foodborne bacteria. Typically this is a heating step to ensure that pathogens are killed.

 

Wynn said reputable raw diet companies will test products to make sure there are no pathogens as part of their quality control procedures.

 

“Raw diets are typically higher in protein and fat. They tend to be – they don’t have to be – but they tend to have low starch or no starch in them. That’s a very calorie-dense diet and high in fat,” Wynn said. “If you’re talking from a nutrient point of view, it’s a very efficient way to keep weight on a dog with high metabolism.”

 

She said raw meat can help keep weight on some show breeds of canines and felines, as well as those with high activity levels, such as herding breeds and sled dogs. Overweight animals and those with certain diseases, however, should steer clear of raw and other high-fat diets.

 

“There is no proof that a raw diet is better than a processed diet,” Wynn said. “There are raw diets that are dangerous, but there are raw diets that could be good. Raw diets come with problems because there are so many types of raw diets.”

 

Possible problems include injury from whole bone ingredients, though Wynn said reputable companies will finely grind bones ingredients, and diets not being properly balanced. The latter is a problem in homemade raw diets, she said.

 

Making homemade pet treats is a popular trend, and Lowman said consumers should be aware that the sale of pet food and treats is regulated in Georgia.

 

“They all need to have a license and it’s going to have a product registration associated with it,” he said. “If you’re a baker, and you use the leftovers to make dog treats and you put those for sale on your counter, it’s regulated. If you give it away, that’s not. But the first time you sell it or barter it, you need to be licensed.”

A fictional pet food label demonstrates some key requirements
for licensed products. By Dallas Duncan

 

The license is to make sure pet foods and labels meet AAFCO standards. Required label components include name and purpose, such as Beef Dog Food or Beef Flavor Dog Food; name of animal species the product is for; net quantity of both weight and volume; a guarantee analysis, which lists the percentage of each nutrient in the food; an ingredient statement, listed in order of predominance by weight; a nutritional adequacy statement showing food is complete and balanced for a particular life stage; feeding directions; and the name and address of the manufacturer or distributor.

 

Wynn said to research the company thoroughly.

 

“I’m looking for a company that has been around for a long time. They must have a nutritionist formulating all the foods, preferably a veterinary clinical nutritionist that they work with or on staff,” Wynn said. “You can’t make a determination of how good a food is just by the label.”