Dog Food Rating Information

When you are looking for the best dog foods for your pet, the first thing you want to look at is the ingredients in the food. OK, then what? Which ingredients are good and which ones aren’t so good? Some ingredients are benign, providing no nutritional value, but not doing your dog any harm. Others, however, are dodgy to say the least. Let’s take a look at some of the worst characters in this rogue’s gallery of ingredients to avoid. The definitions are from AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials). The comments below the definitions are mine.

Meat By-Products: The non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, (italics added) derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs.

This can include “downer” animals, animals unable to stand on their own. The animal’s inability to stand may be caused by illness or injury.

Meat and Bone Meal: The rendered product from mammal tissues, with or without bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably in good processing practices.

With meat and bone meal, any type of animal from any source can be used. This can include “4D” animals (dead, diseased, disabled, or dying prior to slaughter) and animals euthanized at shelters (yes, your dog could be a cannibal, depending on what you are feeding him). Because there are no rigorous quality standards, it can also include cancerous tissue, pus, and spoiled or decomposing tissue.

Chicken By-Product Meal: Consists of the dry, ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines — exclusive of feathers except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices.

As with the meat by-products, all meat has been stripped for human use. Nutritional value is inconsistent since the “ingredients” in each batch of feet, heads, etc. can vary greatly.

Before buying the most popular dog food or the least expensive, you owe it to the health of your dog to compare dog food ingredients. If you see any of the ingredients listed in this post, you might want to think twice before buying.