What Is A By-Product Or Meat Meal In Dog Food?

By-Product: When you see ingredient listed as a by-product, such as poultry by-product, chicken by-product, meat by-product, etc. that means that it is by-products of of slaughtered animals that would never be considered good enough for human consumption. This would include things like feathers, blood, feet, intestines, hair, feces, beaks, cancerous tissue, ear tags, noses, foam packaging, spoiled meat, and heads. This can also include wood shavings or sawdust, but the pet food industry is not allowed more than 35% sawdust in their by-products. There is very little meat, it is what is left over after they take the meat off the slaughtered animal.

Meat Meal, chicken meal, poultry meal, etc. is basically just another term for by-product. It is by-products and meat that would never be considered for human consumption. This could include zoo animals, downed 4-H animals, and diseased animals. The meat unfit for human consumption is boiled down, pulverized, and renamed meat meal for dog food. In fact, meat meal could also contain euthanized dogs and cats!

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that euthanized dogs and cats were found in pet food listed as by-products. At first, pet food company executives and the National Renderers Association absolutely denied the report, then admitted only after the American Veterinary Medical Association and the FDA confirmed the story is indeed true! The FDA became involved because it was reported that dogs and cats seemed to be developing some type of resistance from pentobarbital. It was discovered that this was caused because they were constantly exposed to pentobarbital in their dog and cat food.

According to the FDA, "Because in addition to producing anesthesia, pentobarbital is routinely used to euthanize animals, the most likely way it could get into dog food would be in rendered animal products. Rendered products come from a process that converts animal tissues to feed ingredients. Pentobarbital seems to be able to survive the rendering process. If animals are euthanized with pentobarbital and subsequently rendered, pentobarbital could be present in the rendered feed ingredients.

In order to determine if pentobarbital residues were present in animal feeds, CVM developed a sophisticated process to detect and quantify minute levels – down to 2 parts per billion of pentobarbital in dry dog food. To confirm that the methods they developed worked properly, CVM scientists used the methods to analyze dry commercial dog foods purchased from retail outlets near to their Laurel, MD, laboratories. The scientists purchased dog food as part of two surveys, one in 1998 and the second in 2000. They found some samples contained pentobarbital."
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If you continue feeding commercial dog food, I would recommend to avoid products with by-product or meal anywhere in the ingredient list label.