Q: My dog is allergic to chicken. Will dry dog food that contains chicken fat cause the allergic reaction? I notice that some dry dog foods state that the chicken fat has the chicken protein removed. How does that affect chicken allergies?

A: Thanks for your question. Pets with food allergy usually react most adversely to the whole protein (for example, chicken meat protein), however, they may react to any component of chicken (for example, chicken fat). Think of a person with peanut allergies; they react badly to eating peanuts, but also may have a problem with peanut oil or other peanut-related products. Same thing.

The adverse reactions many pets have are often not true food allergies to a specific type of meat. Many pets have reactions to inferior ingredients, additives and preservatives within a food. Common tests available for diagnosing food allergy (blood tests and skin tests) are not accurate and can lead to many false diagnoses of true food allergy.

Therefore, if a pet is exhibiting adverse reactions to food, my first recommendation is to place them on a natural diet like Halo; without added preservatives, chemicals and artificial colors, to make sure it is not just the inferior ingredients that may be the problem.

Click here to read more about food allergies in pets.

Dr. Donna Spector

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Ask a Vet, Dr Donna Spector, Pet Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.