I used to give our dogs rawhide regularly.
It was only after starting Bounce and Bella that I began to really question pet food industry norms, what did 100% chicken really mean? What were animal derivatives?
Then I discovered rawhide was not what I thought it was – not at all.
What do you think rawhide is?
I believed in the name – so I thought it was hide or skin from the meat industry that was raw, then dried out and simply rolled into shape.
No. No. No.
It does not come from the meat industry (it comes from the leather industry).
It is not dried meat.
It is not simply rolled up.
Here’s a summary from the excellent Rodney Habib post on the PlanetPaws website. It explains the shocking way rawhide is made. (You can find the original post here: https://www.planetpaws.ca/2015/07/31/raw-hide-danger/ and video here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1338278949580317)
- Cattle hides are shipped from slaughterhouses to tanneries – chemicals are applied to preserve them on their journey.
- At the tannery, the hides are stripped of hair and fat using “an ash-lye solution or a highly toxic recipe of sodium sulphide liming.”
- Chemicals are applied to puff out the layers. The outer layer is turned into leather. The inner layer is used for rawhide, gelatin and glue (an excellent reason to avoid gelatin in dog treats).
- The inner hides are then cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and/or bleach.
- They are artificially coloured to make them more attractive to us, the buyer.
- Glue is then used when rolling and pressing into bone shapes (etc), so the rawhide maintains its shape.
I never even considered how rawhide was made. I just relied on its name (non-factual name!) to tell me what it was.
Yet it’s rawhide that we measure all other dog chews against – we expect them to be as cheap as rawhide and to last as long as rawhide.
That’s simply not possible when air-drying meat.
We’re not a perfect company – never will be no matter how hard we try – but we will never sell rawhide.
If you’re interested in our natural air-dried chews made from just one, two or three natural ingredients follow the link: https://shop.bounceandbella.co.uk/collections/all/chews?sort_by=best-selling
And if you haven’t already you can grab an awesome 50% off deal on all of our deliciously healthy treats: https://shop.bounceandbella.co.uk/pages/awesome50