What are chicken meal and by-product, and are they healthy for pets?

By product meal contains the clean parts of the animal that are not rendered, meaning the tissues that people don't eat. This can include scraps of muscle as well as organ meats and bones. It is a nutritious source of protein and vitamins/minerals. It is also a good way to use all parts of the slaughtered animal so there is less waste.

According to Purina, their chicken by product meal is made "of chicken that has been ground and cooked, reducing the fat content to create a protein-rich ingredient." I feed my dog Purina ProPlan and regularly recommend it to others. It is one of the few foods he can eat without issue. While grains have been implicated in allergies, not all dogs who eat grains in food develop allergies. If your dog does well with what you are feeding, there is no need to change it or be concerned. There is no one "best" food. Feed what your dog will eat, does well on and is easy for you to buy.

Hello, by products are commonly used in dog food and have been used for many years. They are generally safe for our pets to consume unless they have a specific allergy to chicken or beef. If so, there are other protein sources for dog food including lamb, duck, venison, and some states even kangaroo. If Prince seems to be doing well on this kind of food, then I would not worry about changing his diet to another food. However, you may find other foods that do not use by products and instead use chicken breast or leg. Likely wise with the beef products. However, do expect these kinds of food to be more expensive. Hope this helps and best of luck.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Chloe. The pet food industry and its terminology can be very confusing. Meat generally refers to skeletal muscle tissue from the animal source (chicken, beef, etc). Meal meal is formed from tissue leftover after slaughter. It is cooked down and dried to be added as a protein source. Bone meal refers to ground bone and adds calcium and phosphorus to the diet. Milk bones are nice treats for dogs as then come in very small sizes. This helps with portion control as many peta are overweight. I have attached an article that will explain this further. I hope this information helps! http://news.vet.tufts.edu/2017/02/unwholesome-ingredients-in-your-dogs-food/

Basically, there is proponent of people in the media and in the "natural" food sector that would like to make everyone believe that grains are the devil and that dogs are wolves. This is, in fact, incorrect. Wheat and soy, grains, contain valuable nutrients including proteins that dogs can readily digest and utilize appropriately. While it is true that there are dogs that get GI upset from consumption of these, the same can be said about beef, chicken, and any other meat protein. Rice, oats, and potatoes are acceptable in small quantities, but do contain starches which are complex sugars, and are a little more difficult to digest. In terms of by-products, this is usually referring to any part of the animal that is not the flesh of the beast. Usually this includes certain organs, bones, blood, etc. These products can be ground up and made into a byproduct - meal of sorts. Obviously, the actual meat is going to contain more appropriate nutrients but if a dog were left to it, they would be happy to eat any and all pieces of an animal. As for specific brands of food, Hill's is the brand that I typically recommend to all my clients and which I feed to my own dogs and cats. I consider it to be very high quality. I can't speak much about the other brand you've named unfortunately as I have little knowledge about it. Hope this helped though!

Higher protein is much better for highly athletic dogs. If your dog is more of a couch potato I would not recommend it. I DO, however, always prefer deboned meat to "meal". "Meal" regardless of the source is usually the off-cuttings of the butchering process.

Again, there is no known problem with these ingredients. The stigma about byproducts is especially annoying, because byproducts like liver, kidney and other organs have great nutritional value compared with meat. The reason behind the stigma is not easy to understand. It really has to do with a series of non- professionals speculating on unsupported theories and then spreading the information as if it's truth. The same happens with people...just look at all the fad diets that come and go. While there may be some shred of evidence that these ingredients may have potential to cause harm, there is not nearly enough for a professional to say that they are bad and other ingredients are good. You can see that the pet food industry has responded to the unsupported claims of grains, natural ingredients, byproducts and even raw food, but please don't take that as confirmation that these ingredients are bad or good. It's nothing more than sales strategy and responding to consumer demands. This is a huge topic that I cannot begin to cover here, so I'll give you a couple links to some helpful articles: https://www.petcoach.co/article/what-to-look-for-when-choosing-your-pet-s-food https://www2.vet.cornell.edu/news/20130205/what-pet-food-should-i-feed