WHAT food are you feeding??? Evan Iams is naturally preserved( of so its claimed)... all of Purina is so evan grocery store stuff isnt all Chemically preserved...Do you not know about the experation dates put on MOST dry food ????Originally Posted by emmylou
Regular dry food does have preservatives and can be left out indefinitely. Most cats are likely to eat it within a few days. After a few weeks, it would probably start to taste stale, but that would be more an issue of palatability than danger.
The expiration date applies to the unopened bag. Once it's opened and exposed to the air, it's going to eventually go stale. Especially when not stored in an airtight container (which it isn't when it's in kitty's bowl). I would also be paranoid about bugs, etc crawling all over it. We actually got ants in one apartment from food that was left out in treatballs for a several days. Those big feeders where you just dump several pounds of food in the top really gross me out. Who knows how stale that food gets.Originally Posted by emmylou
I feed a variety of brands. The expiration dates on the bag tend to be a year away. Why, what is the expiration date on your dry food?
Please google OXIDATION .... as it relates to cellsOriginally Posted by emmylou
Yes, if you have ants, it'd be a problem. Though if they're getting into the cat food, it doesn't matter whether that cat food is new or old.
It will eventually go stale, but it won't harm the cat.
I agree that the expiration dates pertain to unopened food. Just like the jars of salad dressings, etc. that are fine in the cupboard until opened then need refrigeration. After a day sitting out, that dry food isn't "perectly good" anymore.Originally Posted by emmylou
I feed a variety of brands. The expiration dates on the bag tend to be a year away. Why, what is the expiration date on your dry food?
In any case, the expiration date on the bag wouldn't be a day or a week later, or they wouldn't be allowed to sell it. That doesn't make sense. Dry food is manufactured with the understanding that it will be left out. In the unlikely event that a cat left the food uneaten for a week or two, it wouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't throw out perfectly good dry food after a day.
Ants are a whole other issue and you are right about that - they'll get into the food whether it's stale or not.Originally Posted by emmylou
Yes, if you have ants, it'd be a problem. Though if they're getting into the cat food, it doesn't matter whether that cat food is new or old.
It will eventually go stale, but it won't harm the cat.
We didn't have ants until the food was sitting out for days on end.Originally Posted by emmylou
Yes, if you have ants, it'd be a problem. Though if they're getting into the cat food, it doesn't matter whether that cat food is new or old.
I agree I won't eat stale neither will I feed that to my 2 legged kids so why would I feed stale food to me fur baby.Originally Posted by Yosemite
As for stale not harming the cat, I can only assume you have no problem eating stale food yourself that's been left out on the counter for days or weeks. Me, I'm not into stale food so I don't eat it and wouldn't expect my pets to eat it either. Just because they are "animals" doesn't make them less worthy of decent food.
Day-old (or couple of days-old) bread used for croutons, bread pudding, breadcrumbs, etc. is fine. But I find that bread that stays out more than 2 days starts to get mouldy so I put stale bread that I will be using for other things in the freezer until I'm ready to use them. I also don't want to eat crackers after they've sat on the counter and gone stale/soft which I would imagine is happening to the dry food we put down for our kitties as well.Originally Posted by emmylou
I'll eat stale bread... it's fairly common to use it to make croutons or breadcrumbs. There's nothing wrong with it.
There's a major difference in the way different foods react to air. Salad dressings with oils in them, meats, etc., go bad quickly. Dry foods, cereals, trail mix, etc., do not. It's not one size fits all. Once you open a bag of dry food, it's exposed to air -- there's not a whole lot of protection being provided by the open bag, so there's only a little difference between food in the bowl and food in an opened bag. You don't throw out the bag of food after one day.
Also, unless we're talking about an extreme climate, dry food doesn't go stale after a day or even several days.