Article: Testing tastes

LONDON LOG
By CHOI TUCK WO

WHILE a dog’s life may be miserable for some, it certainly doesn’t seem so for Simon Allison.

What’s more, he savours every moment of it; he “eats” animal food almost every other day.

But if you’re expecting him to fight like cats and dogs over leftovers or rummage for table scraps, you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree.

Suffice to say, Allison’s gut-wrenching diet may prove to be too hard to stomach for most people.

Yet, none of Marks & Spencer’s animal products would end up in pet feeding bowls in British homes without having passed through his taste buds.

So, whether it’s chunky pooch snacks or steamed feline meaty slices, Allison finds them palatable all the same.

He had, in fact, trained his palate to detect the delicacies preferred by dogs and cats; his rationale was that the people would find it comfortable serving pet food that tasted like their own.

For all the love of his job – he’s the retail giant’s senior food technologist - he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

But one thing is certain; he doesn’t have to worry too much about being retrenched or finding himself queuing up for that job.

Be that as it may, most Britons still regard it as utter madness for any pet food manufacturer or retailer to actually have a human taster for its products.

With the increasing clamour for posh pet food, it’s no wonder the industry is focusing on nutritious meals for animals. Indeed, the pet food market is big business in Britain, raking in over £1.6bil (RM11.2bil) in 2006 alone.

The debate, however, is not so much over whether pet food is fit for human consumption but whether canines have the same nutritional requirements as humans.

As pointed out by animal nutritionist John Thurley, the public needs good nutritional advice to combat pet obesity rather than what he called “clever marketing”.

As far as he is concerned, humans don’t have the correct qualifications for an animal taster’s job. Thus, Allison doesn’t exactly fit the bill.

It’s not that pets will complain, anyway, even though their tastes, desires and needs may be completely different from ours.

“Humans have more than 9,000 taste buds compared with a dog’s 1,706 and a cat’s mere 473. Making any comparisons about taste is irrelevant,” he was quoted as saying in Britain’s Daily Mail.

Well, Thurley may have a point. And he probably knows what he is saying.

Running his own animal nutritional business and employing an English setter as his food taster, he is probably more qualified than most people to talk about pet food. There is also the question of whether the human digestive system is capable of digesting pet food.

In any case, the issue of whether humans can be better tasters of pet food than the animals themselves gives much food for thought.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Lifefocus 20 March 2008