Do you know what's in your pet's food?

What are meat by-products anyway?



Meat by-products are ground, rendered, and cleaned slaughtered meat carcass parts such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, bones, heads, and intestines (and a small amount of feathers in the case of chicken meat). The terms meat by-products or animal by-products are often used in reference to the ingredients included in commercial pet foods.

The official definition for meat by-products by the Association Of American Feed Control Officials, Inc. (AAFCO) is:"The non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal food. If it bears name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto."

Well, I guess that doesn't sound too bad if you think about what animals would be eating if they weren't domesticated. But lets look behind the curtain and see what that really means as far as pet food goes:

However, in many cases, by-product meals are derived from "4-D" meat sources -- defined as food animals that have been rejected for human consumption because they were presented to the meat packing plant as "Dead, Dying, Diseased or Disabled." The quality of animal meat by-products also tends to be very inconsistent between batches.

Meat by-products are commonly found in lower-grade pet foods and even many of the larger name brands, including Science Diet (even their prescription diet product line), Purina (both Purina One and Purina Pro Plan), and Iams / Eukanuba. Ingredients listed as "meat, beef, chicken, and/or poultry by-products" on pet food labels are not required to include actual meat, and "rendered meat" on labels can refer to any rendered mammal meat, including dogs and cats.

AAFCO Approval
The official Publication of the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) gives wide latitude for ingredients that can be used in animal foods. As shown on the FDA's website here, legally approved pet food ingredients include:

"Collective terms" are used on feed labels to specify the type of product, but not necessarily the specific product, was used to formulate the feed. Any one of several specific products that a collective term covers could be included in the feed. The collective term of concern under the BSE rule is "animal protein products." 7. What is included in the collective term "animal protein products? The AAFCO official publication lists: Animal blood dried Animal by-product meal Buttermilk, condensed Buttermilk, dried Casein Casein, dried hydrolyzed Cheese rind Crab meal Fish by-products Fish liver and glandular meal Fish meal Fish protein concentrate Fish residue meal Fish solubles, condensed Fish solubles, dried Fleshings hydrolysate Hydrolyzed hair Hydrolyzed leather meal Hydrolyzed poultry by-product aggregate Hydrolyzed poultry feathers Leather hydrolyzate Meat and bone meal Meat and bone meal tankage Meat meal Meat meal tankage: Meat solubles, dried Lactalbumin, dried Milk, dried whole Milk protein, dried Poultry by-products Poultry by-product meal Poultry hatchery by-product Shrimp meal Skimmed milk, condensed Skimmed milk, condensed cultured Skimmed milk, dried Skimmed milk, dried cultured Whey, condensed Whey, condensed cultured Whey, condensed hydrolyzed Whey, dried Whey, dried hydrolyzed Whey-product, condensed Whey-product, dried Whey solubles, condensed Whey solubles, dried

 

What this translates into, *legally, is this:

dehydrated garbage (restaurant trash, what the industry calls "plate waste";

un dried processed animal waste products ;

polyethylene roughage replacement (plastic);

hydrolyzed poultry feathers;

hydrolyzed hair;

hydrolyzed leather meal;

poultry hatchery by-product;

meat meal tankage;

peanut hulls;

ground almond shells;

(*Association of American Feed Control Officials, 1998 Official Publication)

A new category of pet food typically marketed as holistic, wellness, organic, ultra healthy, and/or simply premium pet food often emphasizes the use of human-grade meat sources only, with no animal meat by-products of any kind. Examples of such pet foods include Flint River Ranch, Wellness Pet Food, Innova, Life's Abundance, Nutro Ultra Holistic, and Pet Promise.

If you've come this far...

If you've come this far and you still want to learn more, an excellent site was put together by a team of students at the University of Florida: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04/Perhach/ . The material is well researched, in an easy to read style.

 

All pet food links in this page link only to to Wikipedia, so as not to be tied directly with any manufacturer.

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