Photo of by-products being rendered / starkfoodsystems.com
Some of the ingredients found in dog food are the result of rendering. So, what exactly is this?
The process of rendering:
This process converts animal parts deemed unfit for human consumption into a form acceptable for use in pet foods.
The animal materials are ground before being cooked at a temperature between 220° and 270° F for up to an hour. After being cooked, the mixture is then spun at a high speed to remove the grease and tallow. The removed material is then added to pet food and listed as animal fat on the ingredients label.
The mixture that remains after the grease is removed is then dried. This becomes the meal product in many pet foods.
Are meals bad?
"Good meals" include those of obvious origin. Ingredients such as "lamb meal", "beef meal", and "chicken meal" have all been rendered and provide quality nutrition in a dog food.
An ingredient of lower quality is "chicken by-product meal", which contains rendered chicken products, including necks, feet, intestines, and undeveloped eggs.
The ingredient of highest concern is "meat and bone meal" as this can contain the undesirable products listed above, including euthanized animals, diseased animal tissue, flea collars, etc.
To learn more about meals and what is rendered, click here.
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Comments
This article was very educational. I also liked the informative video that was included. This makes me sick, now knowing what is in my pet's food. Perhaps this will be better controlled someday. Thanks for bringing this to the public's attention. I look forward to your articles everyday. They are great!!!!! I also follow the Houston Pet Examiner, but her articles are not nearly as good as yours. Again thanks for caring so much about our pets.
This just makes my stomach turn!! This is so bad. I am glad you are educating the general public on this issue. I will make sure that I get this posted on Twitter so people will understand how bad this really is. Thank you very much.
A word of caution: many good foods include human-grade ingredients that have been "rendered" to meal. Why render? To reduce spoilage. I feed my pets Life's Abundance (www.DogSmithNutrition.com) because it containes human-grade ingredients, is APHIS-certified, and contains NO preservatives (BHA or BHT). In fact, you CAN'T EVEN BUY IT IN STORES because the manufacturer doesn't trust store owners to keep it past it's recommended shelf life of six months. So it ships to your door - no middle man! 441 kcal/cup in the regular dog food as opposed to the 300-350 kcal/cup in most dog foods. So I went from feeding my pointer 2 cups of Nutro twice a day to 1.5 cups of Life's Abundance twice a day. As a result, it is the same price - perhaps less, than most store brands.
My rule of thumb is that if you can buy it in a store, don't bother. Hope that helps!
Catherine,
This is a great point. You can have some quality rendered ingredients in dog food.
The biggest cause for concern would be the "meat and bone meal" or "by-product meal". These are rendered materials of unknown origin or of "waste parts" such as heads, feets, etc. "Meat and bone" meal is the most likely to contain the horrible ingredients explained in the article. However, an ingredient listed as "Lamb meal" means that it has been rendered but contains no by-product and comes from a known source (lamb).
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