Ten or twenty years ago, we were all happy to eat foods full of artificial additives (or perhaps we were just in blissful ignorance). Scientific advances gave us preservatives, colours and flavours which revolutionised the market for prepared foods, and gave us whole new ranges of brightly coloured, sickly tasting foods and drinks that we and our children loved. It turned out though, that all these wonderful additives weren't quite as nice as we'd been led to believe, and over the years many have turned out to have had serious side effects and have been banned from the human food chain. Nowadays, after years of scare stories and some very real evidence for the harm that additives can do to our health, we are moving away from a diet filled with additives to embrace a new, more natural approach to our food. Brands like Innocent have spearheaded the new ‘natural revolution' and even big brands which have relied on artificial additives are starting to see the light and follow the natural trends. And we are starting to reap the benefits of this move away from chemical-filled foods, as our children suffer less diet-related behavioural disorders, and we all feel better for not taking on board the cocktail of E-numbers that used to fill our foods.

In the pet food industry however, this move away from the artificial horrors of yesteryear is proving to be a much slower process than it has been in the human food industry, and I would say the pet food market as a whole is still decades behind the situation in human food. Millions of pet owners still pump their pets full of artificial chemicals as they feed mainstream brands that rely on colours, preservatives and flavours to make their cheap ingredients palatable to the pets and attractive to the owners. And these manufacturers see no reason to change - they make good money out of packaging up cheap ingredients with cheap additives, so why should they change their ways? Well, I would say that the health of the nation's pets is one very good reason, as the evidence continues to mount about the harm that these chemical-laden foods are doing to our pets.

So that's why I have set up The Campaign for Real Pet Food - to champion natural foods which use high quality ingredients rather than artificial chemicals for palatability and nutrition, and to campaign for the outlawing of the worst of these artificial chemicals from all pet foods. We also want to force manufacturers to be more open and honest about what really is in their foods - so you, the caring pet owner, can make an informed choice about what you feed your pets - is that so much to ask in this modern world?