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Pet Food Confidential: Just say no to meat meal
Today's topic is meat meal. It's a common ingredient in dry pet foods, where it might be labeled "meat meal" or "meat by-product meal."
It's made at rendering plants, where animal carcasses are cooked in vats at very high temperatures. The grease is skimmed off (and added back in later, as fat), and what's left is dehydrated until it's a dry product. Then, the rendering plant ships the meal to brokers, who sell it to pet food manufacturers, who mix it with other ingredients, package it, and send it off to your food bowl.
If we could trust that all the meat making it into the rendering vat was up to AAFCO's standards, this ingredient might not be so bad. Their definition is a little vague -- for example, it requires meat meal to be "exclusive of any added" hooves and hair and horns and whatnot -- but that's nothing compared to the reality of rendered meat meal.
Are you sitting down? You should probably sit down. And I sure hope you're not eating lunch.
The problem with meat meal is that rendering plants accept a lot more than just cow and pig carcasses from slaughterhouses. They also take grease and other restaurant and supermarket waste, road kill, dead zoo animals, and hundreds of thousands of euthanized cats and dogs. It all gets cooked together and shipped off to pet food companies.
Pet Food International, which represents the industry, says that none of their member companies use meat meal from euthanized pets. Unfortunately, all that means is that those companies ask the rendering plants that supply them not to provide meat meal from cats and dogs. Pet food companies don't generally test the ingredient or go to any great lengths to insure that there are no zoo animals or euthanized pets in the product. A number of independent media outlets have documented the connection between rendering plants that accept cats and dogs and the pet food companies that feed them, and in 2002 author Ann N. Martin wrote "I still have no doubt that the carcasses of cats and dogs continue to be rendered into product used in many commercial pet foods."
Aside from being sad and disgusting, the presence of euthanized animals in pet food may be a health problem too. Tests by the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) found trace amounts of sodium pentobarbital, the chemical used to put animals to sleep, in products from major pet food manufacturers. Based on their samples, they said that pets weren't likely to be affected by pentobarbital in their food, but CVM only looked at the effect on a single liver enzyme over eight weeks. As Martin says in her book Foods Pets Die For,
"We don't know the long-term effects of sodium pentobarbital ingested in small amounts over many years. If indeed, as the FDA confirmed in its study, sodium pentobarbital exists in small quantities in most of the pet foods it tested, and animal companions eat these foods regularly, what might be the adverse effects over years of exposure?"
On top of all that, the presence of pentobarbital in pet food means that someone isn't playing by the rules. FDA's own regulations state that any animal euthanized with the chemical is restricted from being used in human or animal food. Clearly FDA isn't enforcing that rule.
What we think: Just say no to meat meal. It's usually the major source of protein in dry pet food, but dry pet food is mostly filler grain anyway, so who needs it? If you really like dry food, look for one the specifies what species the meal comes from. "Beef meal," "chicken meal," "lamb meal" and the like aren't perfect, but they're a lot better than mystery "meat" meal.
Photo by .klash.
Thank you for answering my question about "lamb meal" at the end of your column. All the foods I've fed our dogs have it listed as one of the ingredients. I never thought something as simple as buying dog food could be so complicated.
Glad I could help! It really shouldn't be this rough, should it?
The only comment I had on this very informative article, is that most of the "fillers" in pet food are very bad for your pets. I would caution pet owners from using large amounts of corn fillers as it can cause intestinal problems in some animals. Looking for specifics on what is in the food is good...I woudldn't feed my animals anything that wasn't primarily identified (i.e. lamb/chicken meal) even though other things may make it in. Excellent article!
I have felt for a long time that I should be making homemade food for my dog and cat. The only things that have stopped me are time and lack of a recipe (I have no idea what kinds of nutrients are essential for dog and cat health.) I'm writing to ask for any simple quick recipes from all you pet food making pioneers out there!
Thanks!
My dog can't stomach wet foods and after reading all this, I doubt they are any better. So I try and buy what seems like the best for him (Solid Gold) but even though the first ingredient is "bison", the second one is "bison meal". I'm not convinced even the "bison" is anything great now either. Getting these emails are depressing but I feel like the only thing I can do is cook for him (which I don't even do for myself) and only let him play with, geez, now I can't even think of something he can play with. HELP!
Rob, I hate being the bearer of this bad news, but somepet's gotta do it! It's really only a matter of knowing what to look for because good foods are out there. But you might have to look farther than your local Pet Food Warehouse.
"Bison meal" should be pretty good because they're telling you what kind of animal it came from. "Meat meal" is the one that you really don't want. Just look for a food with a quality meat ingredient in the first three or four ingredients, avoid foods with lots of filler like corn and brewer's yeast, and stay away from "meat meal" and "by-products" (if not organic), and the little bits in this post.
And don't be afraid to share your healthy human meal with your pets! Dogs love veggies, and carrots make a great edible chew toy. If you need help with toys, check out my top toy picks.
Great article. I had reacted to the brief excerpt in the email before reading the article in which you write that a specifically identified meat source isn't as bad as meat meal. Before I read that I shot off an inquiry to Wellness as that's what I feed my 2 dogs. Chicken meal is listed as an ingredient. I was none too impressed with the response:
me: I've been using the Weight Mgmt product for a long time and am concerned that you are using chicken meal: Environmental Working Groups' Pets for the Environment cautions to avoid at all costs:" "Meat meal" is whole carcasses or parts of carcasses of condemned meat that have been cooked down, had the fat skimmed off, and then dried to form a meal. But it's not just sick and dying cows and pigs--it's grease and restaurant and supermarket waste, road kill, dead zoo animals, and even euthanized cats and dogs. It all gets cooked together and shipped off to pet food companies".
Wellness: At Wellness we believe in using human grade ingredients whenever possible. Our formulas are 80%+ human grade with only two ingredients that are not considered "edible to humans": chicken meal and fish meal. Interestingly, a division of the UN conducted research during the late 1960's on fishmeal because of its nutrient-rich properties. They found that although great for the body, humans did not like the taste.
Chicken Meal
As the chicken cooks, all of the fat and water are released, creating a concentrated, highly-digestible protein and fat source. For our cat foods, we source and select special low-ash chicken meal as to control mineral levels that contribute to proper urinary health. Wellness uses naturally preserved meat sources.
We do not use dead zoo animals, etc in any of our products or ingredients.
me: Thanks, I'll forward this on to EWG for their comments. I don't think it
says a lot that you're referencing a study from the 1960's on the
healthfulness of fishmeal. Was the fishmeal the same as now? Were the
standards for what is considered healthful or at least benign the same as
now...?
You leave me uneasy and in the market for a new food option.
Anonymous and uneasy, I agree with you. There's so much we don't know, and pet food companies aren't always ready to talk about their ingredients. Wellness should be telling the truth, though, about the zoo animals part since it doesn't sound like they have "meat meal" in the food you wanted to know about. ("Meat meal" is the catchall ingredient; "chicken meal" and "fish meal" should only be chicken and fish.)
I think one of the biggest misconceptions for people researching dog foods is the idea that "meal" ingredients are as good as the meat itself, or the dehydrated version. For example, the reviews at dogfoodanalysis.com don't take in to account the quality of the ingredients, and instead are based more on a combination of the nutritional breakdown and the 'number' of 'meat products' listed.
Something I'd like to see is a list of dog foods that do NOT contain meals. I've searched high and low, and only found a few, like Canine Caviar, Pet Promise, WySong and Artemis.
Anything that says meat meal, animal meal, animal fat, etc., could be dogs and cats, road kill, zoo animals, and the like. Some plants don't even remove the collars from deceased pets. I was very happy to learn that what I'm feeding my puppy and cat have none of that in it; however, I have found out that what I fed my dog and other cats in the past did have that foul stuff in it. My 16 year old dog, who has a kidney problem, has to eat food that I'm pretty sure has that awful stuff in it because it's made by the same company that makes what she ate in the past. What burns me up more than anything is that the food I used to feed them before was high end food; so is what I feed them now. The difference seems to be in the care the company that manufactures the food takes when making the product, and how much they truly care about what goes into their foods.
This is one more area that the Goverment and big business are in bed together. Our poor pets pay the price for the greed, that rules this Great Country. Anyone knowing this dirty little secret about, what is in our pet food ought to be shouting it from the rooftops. If we shout long and loud enough it will come forth and be known. I would love to see 60 minutes get ahold of this. I just learned after I received a new rescue pet. America this is not what we should stand for. Where are our values.?
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