Pet food now stained black

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 3

Pet food now stained black

PA Wellington The next time you open a can of pet food to find black meat inside, do not worry — it has not gone bad. The manufacturers will have dyed it black to comply with an amendment to the meat regulations. Commercial pet food will now have to be stained with a harmless black dye, called Black P.N., to clearly identify it. The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Maclntyre, said yesterday that the change was designed to meet the requirements of overseas markets and to make pet food easily identifiable to reduce the risk of malprac-

tice. The British market takes more than 80 per cent of New Zealand’s pet food exports. Last year, after a scandal about pet food being sold for human consumption, the British authorities required pet food to be either sterilised or stained. Mr Maclntyre said the stain was a harmless food dye and the cost per kilogram of meat was negligible. Experience in Britain, where similar regulations have been in force for nine months, has shown the black colour was not “aesthetically displeasing” to pets or their owners.