PET FOOD INGREDIENTS:
WHAT'S REALLY IN COMMERCIAL PET FOOD?
This page contains the AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials) Definitions of common pet food ingredients. Other ingredients found in pet foods that are defined without the AAFCO's guidelines are noted as such.
In addition, you can find information about manufacturing practices that affect your pet's foods on this page.
Beet Pulp: the dried residue from sugar beet.
Note: added for fiber, but primarily sugar.
BHA and BHT: have long been suspected to be carcinogenic - they prevent the fatty contents of pet food from becoming rancid. Unfortunately they can also initiate birth defects, and cause damage to liver and kidneys (this is not an AAFCO definition).
Copper sulfate: a cheap copper supplement
Note: copper sulfate is considered highly toxic and can be stored in various organs of the body. It is so toxic that people who handle it must wear serious protective gear over any exposed part of their body.
Corn bran: the outer coating of the corn kernel, with little or none of the starchy nutritious part of the germ. Note: see Splitting.
Corn flour: fine-size, hard flinty portion of the ground corn containing little or none of the bran or germ. Note: see Splitting.
Corn gluten meal: the dried residue from corn after the removal of the larger part of the starch and germ, and the separation of the bran by the process employed in the wet milling manufacture of corn starch or syrup, or by enzymatic treatment of the endosperm. Note: see splitting.
Dehydrated food waste: any and all animal and vegetable produce picked up from basic food processing sources or institutions - including garbage from hospitals, restaurants, and grocery stores. The produce has to be picked up frequently enough so that no decomposition is evident.
Dehydrated garbage: composed of artificially dried animal and vegetable waste collected frequently enough so that harmful decomposition has not set in. AAFCO stipulates that dehydrated garbage should be separated from crockery, glass, metal string and similar materials. This might include waste from butcher shops or processing plants that process fruits and vegetables.
Dehydrated paunch products: ingested food and water. Composed of the contents of the rumen of slaughtered cattle, dehydrated at temperatures over 212 F (100 C) to a moisture content of 12 percent or less. The goal of the dehydration is to destroy any pathogenic bacteria.
Dried poultry waste: an animal waste product composed primarily of processed ruminant excreta that has been artificially dehydrated to a moisture content not in excess of 15%. "It shall contain not less that 12% crude protein not more than 40% crude fiber, including straw, wood shavings, and so on, and not more than 30% ash." Often obtained from factory farming operations.
Dried swine waste: an animal waste product composed primarily of processed swine excreta that has been artificially dehydrated to a moisture content not in excess of 15%. "It shall contain not less that 20% crude protein not more than 35% crude fiber, including other material such as straw, wood shavings, or acceptable bedding materials, and not more than 20% ash."
Ethoxyquin is an antioxidant preservative that has since been proven to be highly toxic to animals - causing immune deficiency syndrome, leukemia, blindness, and skin, stomach, spleen and liver cancer. It is not used as much as it used to be due to pet owner protests, but is still approved by the FDA CVM as a preservative in food. (this is not the AAFCO definition)
**Many pet food companies state that they do not add this substance to their foods; what they neglect to say is that their suppliers, the suppliers of the raw material used in pet foods add ethoxyquin before they ship it to the pet food company. The pet food doesn't have to say this on their labels. They only have to state what they have added to food, not what a supplier has added to their raw materials.
Fish: fish heads, tails, fins, bones, and viscera. This comes directly from fish processing plants and is not rendered.
Note: Because the entire fish is not used for most commercial pet foods, it does not contain many of the fat soluble vitamins, minerals and omega 3 fatty acids necessary for good nutrition. When the entire fish is used it is often because the fish contains a high level of mercury or other toxin making it unfit for human consumption.
Fish meal: clean, dried, ground tissue of undecomposed whole fish or fish cuttings, either or both, with or without the extraction of part of the oil created by rendering residue from the fish processing plants and might include heads, tails, innards and blood. Note: See Rendering process.
Ground almond and peanut shells: Another source of fiber.
Hydrolyzed hair: is made from clean hair treated by heat and pressure to produce a product 'suitable' for animal feeding. This includes hair from cattle, horses, pigs, or other animals that have been slaughtered.
Hydrolyzed poultry feather: This product results from a pressure treatment of clean, intact feathers from slaughtered poultry, free of additives and/or accelerators.
Note: This is not digestible material but is considered an acceptable protein source anyway.
Meat: clean flesh derived from slaughtered mammals. Limited to the part of the striate muscle that is skeletal, or what is found in the tongue, diaphragm, heart or esophagus. It can be 'with or without the accompanying and overlying fat and the portions of the skin, sinew, nerve and blood vessels that normally accompany the flesh'. Meat is not rendered but comes directly from slaughterhouses.
Meat Meal: the rendered product from mammal tissue exclusive of blood, hair, hoof, hide, trimmings, manure, stomach, and rumen contents except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably in good processing practices.
Note: See Rendering process.
Poultry by product: nonrendered clean parts of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet and viscera free of fecal content and foreign matter except in such trace amounts as might occur unavoidably in good factory practice.
Poultry by product meal: ground, rendered clean parts of slaughtered poultry, including necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices. Note: See Rendering process.
Poultry hatchery by product: can include a mixture of eggshells, infertile and unhatched eggs, and culled chicks that have been cooked, dried and ground, with or without removal of part of the fat.
Powdered cellulose: this is purified mechanically disintegrated cellulose. It is prepared by processing alpha cellulose obtained as a pulp from fibrous plant material. It is used as a bulking agent.
Soybean meal: Obtained by grinding the flakes that remain after the removal of most of the oil from soybeans by a solvent extraction process.
Spray-dried animal blood: is produced from clean, fresh animal blood, exclusive of all extraneous material such as hair, stomach contents, and urine, except in such traces as might occur unavoidably in good factory practices
Note: Blood from these animals can be used in pet food, either mixed with other materials in the rendering process, or formed into meat chunks that are found in some canned foods.
Sugar foods by products: created by grinding and mixing inedible portions derived from the preparation and packaging of sugar based food products such as candy, dry packaged drinks, dried gelatin mixes, and similar food products that are largely composed of sugar.
Undried processed animal waste product: composed of excreta with or without the litter (litter is the ground covering in chicken pens) from poultry, ruminants, or any other animal except humans. This may or may not include other feed ingredients and contains more than 15% feed ingredients and more than 15% moisture. [it]"shall contain no more than 30% combined wood, wood shavings, litter, dirt, sand, rocks, and similar extraneous materials."
Wheat flour consists principally of wheat flour together with the fine particles of wheat bran, wheat germ, and the offal from the 'tail of the mill' Tail of the mill is nothing more than the sweepings of leftovers after everything has been processed from the wheat.
Note: see Splitting
Wheat germ meal: Consists chiefly of wheat germ together with some bran and middlings or shorts. Note: see Splitting.
Wheat middlings and shorts: the fine particles of wheat germ, bran, flour, and offal from "the tail of the mill." Note: see Splitting.
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Manufacturing Practices You Should Know
| Grain contamination: Grains that are first rejected for consumption by people, and then by livestock (animals that people eat), are used as the grain source for many pet foods. These grains have been rejected because of 2 main causes: | |
| 1) |
They are covered with so much chemical "-icides" (ex. pesticides, fungicides, etc) that are known to be cancer causing agents. |
| 2) |
They have decomposed to the level to produce dangerous and deadly mycotoxins - fungi that grow in moldy grains and produce symptoms ranging from diarrhea and vomiting, to cancer, to immediate death. These mycotoxins can not be destroyed by the cooking process. |
Missing Ingredients: Manufacturers only have to tell consumers what they have put in their foods themselves. They do not have to tell the consumer what the supplier added to the ingredients before they received them. This means that as scary as the ingredients list is above, there is no way to regulate, or to know what is really in pet food, until raw material suppliers also must divulge what is REALLY in the raw materials they are supplying. Euthanized dogs and cats, toxic preservatives and denaturing agents, all the undesirables in your pet's foods, are allowed in at this level, where it can slip in unnoticed and unregulated.
Rendering: click here for the article.
Sodium Pentobarbital: the drug used to euthanize animals. It is not destroyed by the cooking process. Because DNA is destroyed through high heat processes, the presence of sodium pentobarbital is one of the surest indicators that euthanized animals are in any food. An FDA study searching for sodium pentobarbital in pet foods found that in all brands, the presence varies from sample to sample. This is because the raw materials in rendered foods change from batch to batch. To put it plainly, the level of sodium pentobarbital in food is dependent first on the conscience of the manufacturer, but then by how many poodles, or kittens, or euthanized lions happen to come their way when they are cooking a batch.
Not all pet food manufacturers use euthanized pets in their food. However, until there are standards and policing of rendering facilities, it is impossible for the consumer to be sure his pet isn't eating someone else's pet.
To understand how little is being done to protect our pets and the foods they eat, I would like to point out that the FDA has stated that if similar levels of sodium pentobarbital had been found in any foods for people, production would have been immediately halted and a recall would have occurred.
Splitting: This is a term that refers to the way pet food manufacturers can hide the true content of their foods. For example, if a food is comprised mostly of corn products, but the manufacturer wants the consumer to believe it is a mostly meat product, the manufacturer can divide the corn in his foods into small categories such as ground corn, and corn gluten meal. Now that the corn product is divided into two smaller ingredients, the manufacturer can list the meat source first, making it appear that the food is mainly meat, instead of mainly corn, as it really is.