Re: The truth about animal by-products

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> > cats & roadkills of all types! Yes, by-products should be illegal in
> > anything consumed by a pet or livestock. It should not be taken lightly,
as
> > if it was just chicken beaks & feet.
> >   Beware of "by-products" "meat meal" & other non-defined protien
sources!
> > Most of the "high quality" dog foods use questionable meat sources. Read
> > labels!

OK, we're getting pretty far away from endurance discussions, so I'm going
to include the AAFCO definitions of what the differences are between the
different types of meat and everybody can draw their own conclusions about
what they want to feed their pets.

Meat - (this would be included on the label as "beef" or "chicken") = Meat
is the clean flesh derived from slaughtered mammals (note: slaughtered does
NOT mean euthanized animals from the shelter or roadkills) and is limited to
that part of the striate muscle which is skeletal or that which is found in
the tongue, diaphragm, heart or esophagus; with or without the accompanying
and  overlying fat and potions of the skin, sinew, nerve and blood vessels
which normally accompany the flesh.  It shall be suitable for use in animal
foods (meaning it isn't rotten, etc)

Meat by-products = are the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat as
defined above, derived from slaughtered mammals (again, no shelter animals
or roadkill).  It includes lungs, spleen, kidneys, brains, livers, blood,
bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue and stomachs and
intestines freed of their contents.  It does not include hair, horn, teeth
or hooves.  It shall be suitable for use in animal feeds.

Meat meal = Meat meal is the rendered product from mammalian tissue,
exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimming, manure,
stomach or rumen contents except in such amounts as may unavoidably occur in
good processing practices.  It shall not contain extra added extraneous
material not provided for by this definition.  (Then there are some mineral
definitions).  This contains things like euthanized animals, but they can't
define it exactly, because the meal contains whatever came into the
rendering plant that week.

Meat and bone meal = is the rendered product from mammal tissue, including
bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, etc etc etc.  The rest
of the definition is the same as for meat meal, except that it also contains
bone from rendered animals.

So look at your labels.  If you don't want to feed animals from the
rendering plant to your pet, don't feed food that contains Meat Meal.  If
you want to make sure it's good-quality 'meat' from species you're
comfortable feeding to Fluffy, which generally is stuff that would be
perfectly nutritious for humans if we weren't so spoiled and picky (and
stuff that would be fought over by humans in many countries), then buy feeds
that only contain Meat or Meat By-products.

Susan G