A common ingredient found in dog food and cat food is by-products. When you look at your pet food or pet treat label, you might see by-product, chicken by-product, turkey by-product meal, or a few more variations. Most pet owners have never been told exactly what by-products are. If you dont know dont feel bad about itmy guess is that even the pet food manufacturers themselves cant tell you exactly what by-products are in their own brand of pet food.
To give you an understanding of by-products, Id like to compare it to pies. How many different types of pies you can think of? There are apple pies, cherry pies, chocolate pies, meringue pies, meat pies, mud pies, pie in math, cow pies (yuck!) I think you get my point. Now imagine if you were to purchase your dinner at the grocery and you looked at the ingredients and you see pie listed as the first ingredient in your dinner. You wouldnt know if it was apple pie or mud pie or even cow pie. All you would know is that your dinner contained pie. Id guess if you knew that pie could be any kind of pie you wouldnt be buying your dinner with pie listed in the ingredients.
Thank goodness we dont have to worry about pie being a puzzling ingredient in people food. But there is the worry of the pie ingredient in pet food and thats by-products.
Wikipedia describes a by-product as a secondary or incidental product deriving from a manufacturing process,
The AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials the organization responsible for all animal feed manufacturing rules and regulations) defines by-products as meat by-products 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.
So, with respect to pet food a by-product is a catch-all ingredient name. My guess would be that AAFCO decided that chicken lungs or cow intestines listing on a pet food label wouldnt sound very appealing to the pet owner. Probably wouldnt sell a lot of that food.
Instead, all these less than appealing left-overs are clumped into one ingredient name by-product. There is NO certainty of what you are feeding one batch of pet food might be more intestine by-products while the next batch of pet food might be more liver or bone by-products. There is NO consistency to what is actually contained in the pet food ingredient by-product.
Without consistency of ingredients, there is no consistency to the quality of nutrition. Without consistency of quality nutrition, there is no consistency to your pets health.
The Center for Veterinary Medicine states that animal feeds provide a practical outlet for plant and animal by-products not suitable for human consumption. I can only imagine the conversation when that decision was madewhat are we going to do with all these left over intestines and spleens? Ah, what the heck, lets put them in pet food. Well call it something else no one will know and then we dont have to go through the expense and trouble of getting rid of the stuff.
Personally I hope there will soon be a day for truth in pet food labeling. If some manufacturers are going to put intestines and spleen in their foods and treats ok, just tell us. If youve got a clinical study showing pets thriving on these left-overs show us your results. Just dont put this stuff in my pets food bowl and tell me its premium and choice.
Please read your pets food and treat labels. Read the ingredients. Say bye, bye to by-products!
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