Organic Dog Food, yay or nay?!

     JMHO, but in my experience, the "organic", "holistic. "five star" foods are just as processed as every other feed on the market. There is nothing holistic about holistic foods, and the organic ones are usually too heavy on the grains to justify the price. I've tried literally over a dozen different feeds over the years, mostly holistic and a few organic feeds or ones that used at least a few organic ingredients. They all got the thumbs down in regards to long term results   Mostly, there were minor problems - dry skin, frequent or poorly digested cow plops ... But many caused serious problems with a few of the dogs. The worst foods I have ever used were Canidae, Merrick, Newmans Own Organics. While the best foods were along the lines of Blackwood, Purina, Eukanuba (before P&G went and changed the formula for the 1000 time) ... So I don't give too much credence to the organic foods. Besides, as I mentioned, kibble is a processed product. Whatever benefits organic foods may have is negated by the fact that it's still processed, and usually to keep cost down, the food is grain based. Or the price is so outrageous there is really no justification for feeding it. The best way to give dogs fresher foods is to add organic meats, etc. as a supplement to their food. But I really don't see the organic kibbles as having any particular benefit ... My dogs thrive on an economic kibble as far away from organic as is possible, lol, with occasional raw and leftover meat scraps mixed in  :)

 Nay.

As a farmer, I don't support the scam that is organic, in general.  I buy organic products if they are items I happen to be looking for (like whole cream milk and dairy is often also organic, or heritage fruits and veggies).  But, I won't go out of my way to buy them.

Organic once represented a dedication to sustainable agriculture, and producers defined what they meant.  This allowed them to create niche markets for people looking for products that were pesticide free, grown with sustainable soil conditioning agents, and often came from farms that practiced multiculture - raising turkeys in apple orchards to weed and reduce pests, rotating crops, overwintering livestock on fallow cropland - the list goes on and on.  The focus was on what to do in the pursuit of sustainable food products.

Then agricorps realized these little guys were nibbling away at their bottom line.  They wanted to get in on it too, but they couldn't compete with the family farm - multiculture is the opposite of what corporate farming is all about.  They invented monoculture.

They got the government to regulate the label "organic."  Now, it's all about what  the little farms  can't do.  And that kind of regulation favors corporations.  They can easily manipulate the loopholes they leave for themselves, while cutting out the family farmers who don't quite fall within the strict definitions.

For instance, most organic milk available today comes from herds that only start out "organic."  The corporations do this easily, by maintaining huge dairies just as they always did, with a small dairy dedicated to the organic herd.  If a cow gets sick, she is not treated holistically, as she would on a multiculture farm.  Instead, she's treated with off-label anitbiotics just as usual, and then moved on to the conventional herd, where she'll spend the rest of her short life on hormones, antibiotic laced feed, and die used up at the ripe old age of maybe four or so (cows normally live into their teens).

Ditto with organic poultry, eggs, and meat.  The regulations for meat are especially devious.  There's absolutely no way I could raise organic lamb, unless I raised my numbers, stopped raising my lamb on pasture, and sold it off at about  months old.  And I'd have to treat my ewes like crap.

There are plenty of farms who can keep up and still are genuinely dedicated to true sustainable farming, but the problem is that you need to seek them out.  You'll never know from looking at a label of ingredients, whether the organic stuff was sourced from family farms or an agricorp.  Unless they say so.

Okay, with regard to dog food.  One huge problem is that organic meat of any kind is really expensive.  so the organic dog food products tend to use a lot of grains, which are much less pricey.  So you end up buying a bag of really ch-ching grains.  Not really my cup of tea.
 

nay. I think the "organic" food thing is a scam to begin with. Organic dog food tends to be super-heavy on grains.