fairfolio
Saved Projects

Is Your Dog Food Safe?

CSEF · 2017 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only)

Heather Anne George · Fairmont Private Junior High School, Anaheim, Orange County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this science experiment was to determine if there were harmful bacteria in popular brands of dry, canned, and wet dog food. If dry, canned, and wet dog food are tested for bacterial colony growth, then the dry dog food will show the greatest bacterial colony growth. Methods/Materials Three trials of the following steps were completed. Two pre-prepared nutrient agar petri dishes were inoculated with each brand and type of dog food. The petri dishes were observed for bacterial colonies every other day for 11 days. At the end of 11 days, the average number of bacterial colonies in each petri dish in each group were calculated and compared. Materials included dry, canned, and wet dog foods; nutrient agar petri dishes with lids, gloves, and sterile swabs. Results In the dry dog foods, Natural Balance had more colonies than the others in all three trials. Natural Balance had a range of 6.5 to 22 colonies in the three trials. In the canned dog foods, Royal Canin had the most colonies in Trials 2 and 3. Royal Canin had a range of 0.5 to 22.5 colonies. In the wet dog foods, Nature's Recipe and Royal Canin had the most colonies. Nature's Recipe had a range of 1.0 to 3.5 colonies and Royal Canin had a range of 0.0 to 12.5 colonies. Conclusions/Discussion When the dry, canned, and wet dog foods were tested for numbers of colonies, one brand of food in each group had more colonies. Contaminated dog foods could be responsible for some dogs digestive tract diseases causing serious health threats. This study confirms some commercially prepared dog foods contain bacterial colonies. Additional studies need to be done including more brands of dog food and testing more samples from each brand.

Summary statement

Dry, canned, and wet dog foods were tested for bacterial colony growth.

Help received

Mr. John Briner encouraged me to include more types of dog food as well as helped me bleach and dispose of contaminated agar plates.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2017 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J2006

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google