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NEW NUTRITIONAL SOLUTION FOR CAT HAIRBALLS
30 September 2003 - University of Wisconsin-Madison
| It's a question most people wouldn't think, or want, really, to consider: What's in the average cat hairball besides hair? A team of scientists did ponder that question, however, and their curiosity has produced a new nutritional solution for hairballs that may improve the lives of thousands of felines and their owners. |
Mark Cook, animal scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and researchers at the Nestl預urina PetCare Company have devised a way to help dissolve hairballs by using agents that break up, or emulsify, fats. Cook and his collaborators, Beth Drake, Leonard Girsch and Janet Jackson, conceived the idea after discovering that hairballs can contain up to 30 percent fat. A patent on the technique was issued jointly to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a non-profit agency that manages intellectual property for UW-Madison, and Nestl預urina in May 2003. Nestl預urina holds an exclusive license to the technology and has incorporated it into new hairball-control cat food formulas that arrived on store shelves earlier this summer. Known scientifically by the more obscure term bezoars, hairballs are a natural, albeit unappealing, outcome of a cat's grooming rituals. They develop when hair swallowed by the cat enters the stomach and snares undigested fat, forming a tight association with it, says co-inventor Jackson, a Nestl預urina scientist. Once a ball forms, it tends to stay trapped and growing in the stomach until coughed up, much to the dismay of cat owners. During ongoing conversations with Nestl預urina scientists about a variety of pet care issues, Cook says the subject of hairballs kept coming up. "They kept asking me about them," he recalls. "So, I finally said, 'Well, what is a hairball?' They all laughed and said, 'It's hair.' So I said, 'Put 20 of them in a box and ship them to me.'" After a simple analysis of the water, fat, protein and ash content of the hairballs revealed their fatty nature, the team quickly hit upon the idea of using a detergent to break up the fat and disintegrate the balls. Cook first tested a common dishwashing detergent. When that worked, he moved on to a food-grade fat emulsifier, a solution of which trimmed the size of hairballs by more than 50 percent. In the new hairball formulas developed by Nestl預urina, an edible emulsifier called soy lecithin helps break down existing hairballs, allowing them to pass more easily through a cat's digestive tract, and minimizes the formation of new ones. The technology's main advantage, says Jackson, is that it provides good hairball control with less fiber than traditional hairball formulas. "High-fiber diets help to push hair through the digestive tract. But they also aren't as digestible, so cats need to eat more food for proper nutrition," she says. "Adding a fat emulsifier in conjunction with a lower fiber level addresses the hairball problem while allowing cats to absorb the nutrients they need."
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About: University of Wisconsin-Madison
In achievement and prestige, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has long been recognized as one of America’s great universities. A public, land-grant institution, UW-Madison offers a complete spectrum of liberal arts studies, professional programs and student activities. Many of its programs are hailed as world leaders in instruction, research and public service.The university traces its roots to a clause in the Wisconsin Constitution, which decreed that the state should have a prominent public university. In 1848, Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin’s first governor, signed the act that formally created the university, and its first class, with 17 students, met in a Madison school building on February 5, 1849. From those humble beginnings, the university has grown into a large, diverse community, with about 40,000 students enrolled each year. These students represent every state in the nation, as well as countries from around the globe, making for a truly international population. UW-Madison is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Wisconsin System, a statewide network of 13 comprehensive universities, 13 freshman-sophomore transfer colleges and an extension service. One of two doctorate-granting universities in the system, UW-Madison’s specific mission is to provide "a learning environment in which faculty, staff and students can discover, examine critically, preserve and transmit the knowledge, wisdom and values that will help insure the survival of this and future generations and improve the quality of life for all." The university achieves these ends through innovative programs of research, teaching and public service. Throughout its history, UW-Madison has sought to bring the power of learning into the daily lives of its students through innovations such as residential learning communities and service-learning opportunities. Students also participate freely in research, which has led to life-improving inventions from more fuel-efficient engines to cutting-edge genetic therapies. Students, faculty and staff are motivated by a tradition known as the "Wisconsin Idea," described by UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904 as the compelling need to carry "the beneficent influence of the university ... to every home in the state." The Wisconsin Idea permeates the university’s work and helps forge close working relationships among university faculty and students and the state’s industries and government. |
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