What is in your Cat or Dogs food??

What is the Meat in Your Pet’s Food?

It’s important for you to know the truth about the meat in your pet’s food, whether you buy it from the supermarket or a specialty "natural" pet food store.

Protein in your pet’s food comes in various forms – meat, poultry or fish, meat or poultry meal, and meat by-products.

In the food industry, only about 50 percent of every animal can be used as food for human consumption.

The remaining parts, or "by-products" – heads, feet, bones, feathers, blood, intestines, organs, fat scraps, even unborn fetuses – are used in pet food and animal feed.

The Pet Food Institute – the trade association of pet food manufacturers – acknowledges the use of by-products in pet foods. To quote them directly:

"The growth of the pet food industry not only provided pet owners with better food for their pets, but also created profitable additional markets for American farm products and for the by-products of the meat packing, poultry, and other food industries which prepare food for human consumption."

Commonly you’ll find meat meals in pet foods, including poultry meal, by-product meals, and meat-and-bone meal. 'Meal' signifies that these ingredients are not fresh; they are "rendered".

Rendering is the process where various ingredients are emptied into a large vat and boiled for several hours. These high temperatures can damage proteins and destroy natural enzymes.

From a health standpoint, denatured proteins from high processing temperatures can lead to food allergies and intolerances and inflammatory bowel disease.

But here’s what’s so controversial: In addition to food animal scraps, rendering, by law, can include grocery store expired meat (Styrofoam wrapping intact), road kill, diseased and disabled (and dead) cattle, and even euthanized pets.

Pet food companies claim they no longer process dead dogs and cats (insiders admit they previously did), but the FDA has found pentobarbital, the most common euthanasia drug, in rendered meat-and-bone meal and animal fat.

If your pet food label states one or more named meats such as "chicken" or "lamb", they are not by-products. However, they are still mostly leftover scraps and bones. "Chicken" consists of backs, spines and ribs, with minimal meat left on the bones. And yes, bones can count as protein!

Unless the label on your pet’s food states that the food is "safe for human consumption", you can bet the protein source is less-than-optimal.

Thanks to Dr. Karen Becker and her research.

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