Healthy and Not Healthy Pet Food Ingredients | Poultry, Fish, Meat and Animal

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Raising Your Pets, Dogs and Cats Naturally

How to Understand Your Pet Food Ingredients

Best and Worst Pet Food Ingredients

What's really inside your pet's food? It could be your pets!
Are these healthy pet food ingredients?

Why you should never feed your pet a pet food that contains poultry.

Is poultry bad for your dog or cat? Well, yes and no. Here’s the scoop on poultry and pets, and why you will never find the ingredient poultry in YOUR food. What?

Have I totally confused you yet? I want you to picture what poultry looks like or what it is……OK. Do you have a picture? Was it a chicken? Turkey? Goose? Ah, do you see where I’m going with this? The ingredient poultry is any remnant of any bird that has been rendered in a pet-food rendering plant.

Healthy and Not Healthy Pet Food Ingredients. Your dogs, cats, roadkill, and zoo animals are also included in rendering plants! Yes, you read that right. Have you ever seen either of these words in your pet's food or treats: “meat,” “animal,” “animal by-product,” or “meat by-product”? You can be assured that this includes pets! 
What’s really inside your pet’s food?

What is a rendering plant and why is it best to avoid those ingredients in your pet’s food? First, the feed that comes out of a rendering plant is not fit for human consumption. That right there means I’d never feed it to my dog or cat. Rendering plants recycle the scraps, waste, and goo from a slaughterhouse. This also includes all the rejected food from the human food industry.

Your dogs, cats, roadkill, and zoo animals are also included in rendering plants! Yes, you read that right. Have you ever seen either of these words in your pet’s food or treats: “meat,” “animal,” “animal by-product,” or “meat by-product”? You can be assured that this includes pets! A quote from JIV Day, “One estimate states that some 40 billion pounds of slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains of millions of euthanized cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed.” Livestock feed is pet food.

Very Graphic Video of Rendering Plant

What's really inside your pet's food? It could be your pets! Click To Tweet

So, the next time you are reading your pet food label and you see a vague term like poultry, fish, meat, or animal, you can be assured that meat came from a rendering plant. In all honesty, MOST (not all) meat ingredients from large pet food companies come from unsavory sources. Do your homework before feeding your pet. Remember, you are what you eat.


Do you really know where your pet’s food is coming from? 

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Healthy and Not Healthy Pet Food Ingredients. Your dogs, cats, roadkill, and zoo animals are also included in rendering plants! Yes, you read that right. Have you ever seen either of these words in your pet's food or treats: “meat,” “animal,” “animal by-product,” or “meat by-product”? You can be assured that this includes pets! 
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36 thoughts on “Healthy and Not Healthy Pet Food Ingredients | Poultry, Fish, Meat and Animal

  1. I find the whole field of pet nutrition utterly confusing, with so much contradictory information from so called “experts” adding to the confusion. It’s so important to read labels and understand what those ingredients are. I find it incredible when I read people praising various brands, when there’s barely a recognisable ingredient in the whole package. I was always surprised by how many vets are not as informed about nutrition as one would expect them to be. I’m happy Red is now on a homemade, whole foods diet. She doesn’t have diarrhea anymore, she doesn’t lose interest in her food anymore, and best of all it was created specifically for her needs, based on blood test results. You can’t get much better than that. Thanks for helping to raise awareness about what people are “really” feeding their animals.

  2. It’s incredible what the pet food industry will put in pet food. We only feed limited ingredient diets, with ingredients that I actually know what they are and where they came from. Plus, a really long time ago, before I knew what I know now about pet food, we found out that our older dog Helo has a “poultry” allergy. Not to actual poultry, because we partially raw feed and he handles chicken, turkey and duck just fine… he, like lots of other dogs, didn’t handle the “rendered poultry” in big brand pet foods very well. That was one of the things that gave me the “kick in the butt” so to speak to better research what I was feeding my dogs. Thanks for the great article revealing what the big food brands don’t want us consumers to know.

  3. This is why I feed my dogs Dr. Harvey’s and add my own proteins and oils. After the recall due to the euthanasia drug in it, I said “No Way!” This is a REAL eye-opener.

  4. Great article. We scrutinize the food we give our feline Tribe of Five as closely as the food we eat. Each one has special issues (weight, allergies, etc.) so it isn’t easy but they’re our fur kids and it’s well worth the time to keep them healthy, happy and with us for many years!

  5. I don’t know what the odds of that happening really are but we try to feed the best food we can afford which at this time is raw food.

  6. It’s really important to know and understand ingredients… as well as to know what is best for your particular dog.

  7. I couldn’t watch the video, but I have read about this and find it so utterly disturbing. I don’t think most people know about this.

    Although for totally different reasons, I also won’t choose food with rabbit in it. I know it is becoming popular in many of the high end pet foods, but as a person with a pet rabbit, I also find that pretty disturbing. Rabbits are the third most popular pet in America and having dog and cat food made out of pets is upsetting. I know this is totally different from what you are talking about in your post, but just thought I would mention it.

  8. In some respects, I think I’m grateful that one of my dog’s has a major food sensitivity because it started me on the path of really reading labels, asking questions and exploring options for healthy foods for all three of my dogs. I am appalled by what companies who claim to be committed to the health of pets, will justify putting in their foods.

  9. There was one very VERY angry person who really hates Evanger’s pet food, they were all over the Global Pet Expo feed carefully paced but so full of hate as they had lost their pet through the dangerous stuff in their food.

    It is, frankly massively depressing to read all this – none of us can trusty anyone with anything. What do you feed, what do you risk.

    1. It is really sad. And sad that our pet food industry is horrible. Even the rules are horrible. Then the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) don’t even enforce the crappy rules they have. What do I feed? Fresh food that I prepare myself.

  10. This is literally making me physically ill. I always read pet food labels carefully looking for quality ingredients. I know if the label says “with” beef, chicken, etc. it means there isn’t really quality beef or chicken, etc. in it. They’re required by law to say “with” because of that.
    Love & Biscuits,
    Dogs Luv Us and We Luv Them

  11. Very good point! It is horrible that pet food manufacturers choose rendering as an option for their foods. Though I am sometimes limited financially on what I can do, I do look to make sure the food shows that it contains a specific species of animal’s meat in it and not ____ by-product. Wet cat foods are much easier to get away from the by-products than dry ones (which I never use).

  12. Another reason we make his food from scratch … Also with mars and other candy industries owning the pet food supply … I mean what could go wrong?

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