When handled in an hygienic manner (remove powder with a clean spoon and close the can immediately afterwards) and cool and dry storage, the Cat-Milk can be used up to the printed date. We also recommend a short test (appearance, smell) before use.
The expiration date is printed on the folding box and only applies to unopened tubes. After opening, we can not guarantee a certain freshness. After speaking with our quality assurance team, however, our pastes are generally good for at least 4 - 5 weeks after opening and keeping them cool and hygienic. We can however only guarantee the declared quantity of vitamins for the original sealed product, since the vitamin depletion is influenced by different factors.
We differentiate between "simple sugars" - i.e. household sugar - and "double sugars". Double-sugar is sugar which is contained in natural raw materials such as, for example, milk sugar in milk (lactose), malt sugar in malt (maltose), or most commonly known as fructose in fruit. In the majority of our products, we do not use conventional sugars, instead resort to the healthier double-sugar. Unfortunately, however, this is not possible in all cases, for example if an animal does not tolerate certain double sugars - for example, cats do not tolerate lactose - or if another raw material in the recipe does not react with the Double-sugar. In such cases we are dependent on commercial sugar.
For a better understanding, we do not use sugar to supplement any ingredient. Rather, sugar is a flavor, it is only added to a recipe, if one wants to improve its taste. This is not only the case when it comes to animal foods, but is also practiced in the human realm. Many foods would not taste good to us if they were not refined by sugar, whether it be simple or double.
Many carbohydrates are energy source and storage and can be digested to varying degrees. The usability vares for different animal species/organisms. While the monosaccharide glucose (glucose) represents the energy transporter in the blood of the vertebrates, the digestion of the cellulose is only reserved for food specialists. Carbohydrates, however, are also the so-called probiotics, which promote the growth of desired bacteria in the intestine, in order to impede thereby pathogenic germs. If the consumer follows our feeding recommendation for cat pastes, the cat obtains about 0.5-0.65g of maltose per day. A commercially available premium cat food contains about 30-33% starch. According to the usual feeding recommendations, a cat would consume 20-23g starch. Starch consists of D-glucose. So an entirely normal daily ration of a premium main food contains approximately 35x more glucose than the daily ration of a catpaste.
The different sugars and other carbohydrates are treated differently in the body of the animal, so they are not equal. A comparison between the animal species or the human body to the dog/cat body is not automatically possible.
Domestic cats can not recognize sweet as taste quality. If they prefer sweetened products, this is due to other reasons, such as consistency. There is no need to sweeten food for cats. The caries problem in cats and dogs is different than in humans. A study explains that starch and sucrose have no influence on caries, plaque formation and inflammation of the gingiva (Carlsson and Egelberg, 1965). The carbohydrate content in our pastes is so low that a diabetic animal is not exposed to any risk when the feeding recommendation is taken into account.
We currently have approximately 400 products in our assortment, about 75% of our products currently do not contain simple sugar. We will do our best to improve this rate in the future. If sugar is present in the product, it is also listed in the ingredients. We give our customers the opportunity to decide for themselves.
Our pastes contain high quality oils with important, unsaturated fatty acids. These oils are inherently less durable because they are attacked by oxygen. If we used more stable oils, these would contain significantly less unsaturated fatty acids.
To ensure that the pastes are stable and do not become rancid or bitter, antioxidants (oxygen scavengers) must be added. We list it on our packaging whenever we use antioxidants. This enables the purchaser to decide for himself whether the advantage of the paste is higher than the risk arising from a small amount of antioxidants and subsequent spoilage.
The BHT used by us has been approved in cats and has been found to be suitable for the animal species "cat" within the framework of the authorization. We do not use ethoxiquin as an antioxidant.
In principle, all ingredients used - irrespective of how valuable they are - are declared under declaration groups, which are prescribed by law. Thus, e.g. malt, which is an important component of anti-hairball pastes, is recorded in the group "herbal by-products". Also valuable raw fibers.
Another example: "meat" is declared in the group "meat and animal by-products". As with all our declarations and all ingredients used, we adhere very strictly to the German Feed Regulations and the European Feed Law. Animal by-products are thus clearly defined for meat ingredients which are not skeletal meat (e.g., fillet, chop, hips). We use high-quality components from lungs, liver or kidneys,as offered at every butcher, as our animal by-products. However, this is not a matter of "slaughter waste", but food components which have always been part of the natural diet of cats. We also do not use waste from the bread industry.
The question here is whether pure muscle meat is really healthy for cats. The natural food of cats would be mice, frogs, birds etc. With these, the cat ingests only a small part of muscle, but also intestines, tendons, skin, eyes, brain, etc. If a cat were fed only muscle flesh, this would not be natural and would not be considered a complete diet.
