# rendered dogs & cats in PET FOOD???



## xxxxdogdragoness (Jul 22, 2010)

I have been doing research online, but I can't copy/paste any pages because im mobile & don't know how on this phone lol. I knew that meat by product & meat meal & animal fat were bad but I did t know that I could be feeding my dog OTHER DOGS disgusted me. If course I don't feed those foods but I did in the past before I knew better. I have seen ppl online saying that their dogs stopped eating foods like pedigree & such because they changed their ingredient list to include these unnamed by products.

Now I feed TOTW which is made by Diamond, should I be worried?


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## Hallie (Nov 9, 2008)

Some people have some very strong opinions about this, but more than likely your dog has never eaten any food containing cats or dogs. I've always suspected this to be a rumor, nowadays it would be especially hard to get by with something like that. TOTW is a quality food, you have absolutely no need to worry. Even dog chow doesn't have dogs and cats in it, so no worries. IMO it's just a rumor. The evidence for it is sketchy too. Meat meal is pigs, goats, cows, or sheep it is definitely not dogs or cats.


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## Maggie Girl (Feb 27, 2011)

Personally, I think it's a rumor. I think if dog and cat were real ingredients then we'd have seen something about it on 60 minutes or dateline.


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## Pawzk9 (Jan 3, 2011)

dogdragoness said:


> I have been doing research online, but I can't copy/paste any pages because im mobile & don't know how on this phone lol. I knew that meat by product & meat meal & animal fat were bad but I did t know that I could be feeding my dog OTHER DOGS disgusted me. If course I don't feed those foods but I did in the past before I knew better. I have seen ppl online saying that their dogs stopped eating foods like pedigree & such because they changed their ingredient list to include these unnamed by products.
> 
> Now I feed TOTW which is made by Diamond, should I be worried?


TOTW doesn't contain any un-named meat meals unless you are really concerned about what type of fish your dog is eating.


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## xxxxdogdragoness (Jul 22, 2010)

But euthed animals are rendered, where do they go? 
Thanks for quelling my concerns guys, I was very worried that my dogs had been cannibals in the past O.O


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

There is the possibility of roadkilled dogs and cats in "meat and bone meal" because they basically throw everything they scrape off the road into that. Or so I'm told by the people who work at rendering plants. I'm pretty sure that chemically killed animals have to be incinerated or put in the landfill. Although there is a possibility that a chemically euthed horse may go to the rendering plant (cheaper than digging a big hole). That's my understanding on it anyway.


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## Pynzie (Jan 15, 2010)

The animals euthed at our shelter get cremated. And I've heard the throw all the ashes into some apple orchard somewhere. Fertilizer? Apparently you can't just bury them since they had chemicals injected into them. And if you can't even bury them, I don't see how they could ever get made into food.


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## BeyondBlessed (Jan 25, 2011)

Personally I believe it. One episode of _Dirty Jobs_ showed a rendering plant, and while I didn't see any dogs or cats in there the owner said they use their products for pet foods and even soaps. 

Oh, and this..


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## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

Feed Your Pet Right debunked this myth.. it may have been true at one point in time, but it is no longer. They DID however find traces of the chemicals used to euthanize animals in nearly all pet foods, though the sources of it were from farm animals that were euthanized.. Still makes you think.

ETA: The animals at our shelter that are euthanized are sold to a company that prepares them for use in veterinary colleges.


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## blues327 (May 2, 2011)

I think that this use to be true, I don't think it still is now. That said, I don't think commercial dog foods are regulated well. Beyond the confusion and mystery of what exactly is in rendered meats, there's the whole denaturing meat process. 

From the Urban Green Girl website, "_All meats that are not to be used for “human consumption” but are to be sold after slaughter are to be denatured as per government regulations to prevent them from being rerouted and used for human consumption. The denatured carcasses and other waste can then be transported to the rendering facility. This is done by adding sufficient quantities of dye, charcoal, malodorous fish oil, acid, sodium pentobarbital (poison used to euthanize pets) fuel oil, kerosene, crude carbolic acid (phenol, a potentially corrosive disinfectant), creosote (used to preserve wood or as a disinfectant) and citronella (an insect repellent made from lemon grass) are the approved denaturing materials approved in both Canada and United States._"

I've read they can also use bone meal as a denaturing method, which doesn't seem as bad as some of the others they mention. 

http://law.justia.com/cfr/title09/9-2.0.2.1.24.0.21.13.html

You can contact the different dog food companies and ask them the method of denaturing they use, although some companies may not give a straight answer about it. Some companies seem more willing to talk about it than others when asked. I've read that Champion Pet foods say they are able to get around the government regulation and that they do not denture their meats at all. 

The recent study at Indiana University is also bringing to light unknown chemicals found in dog food, when they looked at the levels of chemical flame retardants found in the blood of pet dogs compared to the levels found in commercial dog foods. I guess the levels were pretty high in the pet dogs and half of the amount could be found in the dog foods they tested for it. I wish they would have mentioned which brands of dog food they tested, although they did say they thought it was coming from the commercial processing of the food and not from a certain added ingredient. 

http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/flame-retardants-10x-higher-in-dogs/


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## luvntzus (Mar 16, 2007)

A couple of years ago I worked at an animal shelter that sent dead (euthanized) animals to a rendering plant. I always wondered what they did with the animals. Are there any uses besides being put in pet food?


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

This short article is a little reassuring.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-03/ground-animal-byproducts-could-be-turned-oil-free-biodegradable-plastics


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## Hallie (Nov 9, 2008)

Just wanted to add, Dogs would have no problems eating another dog. It may seem gross and just flat out wrong, but naturally they do not differentiate potential meals by species.


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## xxxxdogdragoness (Jul 22, 2010)

True cannibalism is not taboo in the animal world, but I have read articles that said they even throw the animals in wearing their collars & flea collars of the owners didn't take them. 

As a horse owner who has had to euth a couple of horses in my time, we made sure they were buried, not rendered, I just couldn't stand the fact of some other animal could be eating my horse. We have always either buried or cremated our dogs.


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## Mr. V (Jan 28, 2010)

I think a lot of this stems from just a few PETA inspired type videos and have grown into massive internet myths that these incidences are widespread throughout the petfood industry. Kind of reminds me of the videos they have of downer cows getting dragged by their legs to the slaughter house b/c they can't walk - these are isolated incidences.


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## SpiderGirl (Dec 27, 2009)

I was doing some research on the alligator farming industry and it explained that after taking the skin and tail meat, the rest of the body is used for pet food. That itself was enough to make me never buy anything that has "meat" listed without saying what kind at all. Just gross, not knowing what kind of "meat" it might be.


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## MagicRe (Jan 8, 2010)

why is it so hard to believe that rendered dogs and cats would be used in dog food....when human food is going through the same scrutiny and 

there are things being done to the animals before they are slaughtered...slaughtering methods are under investigation and practices in the manufacturing plant that aren't quite kosher are coming to light.

i absolutely believe that rendered animals are used in dog food.....


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## katielou (Apr 29, 2010)

dogdragoness said:


> True cannibalism is not taboo in the animal world, but I have read articles that said they even throw the animals in wearing their collars & flea collars of the owners didn't take them.
> 
> As a horse owner who has had to euth a couple of horses in my time, we made sure they were buried, not rendered, I just couldn't stand the fact of some other animal could be eating my horse. We have always either buried or cremated our dogs.


Interesting i felt the compete opposite with my horses i didn't want them to rot in the ground. Mine were sent to the hunt dogs to continue the circle of life as beautiful and cruel as it is.


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

SpiderGirl said:


> I was doing some research on the alligator farming industry and it explained that after taking the skin and tail meat, the rest of the body is used for pet food. That itself was enough to make me never buy anything that has "meat" listed without saying what kind at all. Just gross, not knowing what kind of "meat" it might be.


I agree it's gross not knowing what kind of meat is in your dog's food. . .but why would alligator meat be any grosser than meat from cows or sheep or kangaroos?

I believe it, too. Why not? That's the whole reason mad cow disease got spread around, scrapie in sheep, etc. Everything goes to the rendering plant, the resulting product goes to livestock feed, including dog and cat food.


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## xxxxdogdragoness (Jul 22, 2010)

Yeah I read one article that said they also use the outdated meat from supermarkets & such, which isn't bad persay, but they put the meat with the packaging intact.


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## MagicRe (Jan 8, 2010)

katielou said:


> Interesting i felt the compete opposite with my horses i didn't want them to rot in the ground. Mine were sent to the hunt dogs to continue the circle of life as beautiful and cruel as it is.


i don't disagree with circle of life.....and yes, it is both beautiful and cruel...

we cremate our dogs and then they become fertiliser at a place called multnomah falls where they help trees grow, since matter can neither be created nor destroyed...


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

I would rather not have the circle of life interrupted by so much decomp and rendering before put into animal feeds. Rendering kills the bacteria and other decomposing organisms but doesn't destroy all of the toxins they produce. I would rather not pay for plastic and flea collars and such either.


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## BlueChaos (Mar 29, 2010)

I got a book written by Susan Thixton (if anyone is familiar with her blog) and theres a very interesting and disturbing first hand experience from a pest control operator documenting what he saw at a rendering facility:

" the plant was out in the middle of an open field and except fir a 15 foot parameter around the building, the weeds were waist to neck high. I entered the plant on a dirt drive that went up to a concrete parking slab in the front of the building;in front of the office door and a large overhead foor. The dirt drive went around one side of the building to the back where there was a concrete dump area with an overhead door going into the building. The concrete slab was sloped away from the building with a curb on both sides so that they could wash down the area. This is where the dead animals, parts and pieces of animals and other things to be rendered or processed were dumped. Between the dirt drive area and the building was junk parts and equipment piled up that obviously house a large colony of rats as you would see their trails in and out of the junk piles. The other dumping ground or machine parts, etc, out back was also full of rats. The concrete pad in the back where trucks dumped their loads had rat holes lining the curb that ran along the sides. 
As you might imagine this area was loaded with flies; the piles of products were alive with maggots. It made it look like the whole pile of product was alive and moving. After the loads were dumped they were picked up by a bobcat (miniature loader with a scoop on the front) and hauled inside the plant to the rendering pit. The plant had 3 undocumented workers doing the labor, including running the bobcat. The pit was a concrete hole with sloped sides that was about 8 to 10 feet deep and it had four sides that were about 7 feet long. There was a small seam 1 inch wide about 4 feet down that ran all the way around the pit. This seam, as the ones in the corners, had several rat holes in them, so rats were living in the rendering pit. 
At the bottom of the pit was an auger grinder that ground the product and augured in out to a bin to be cooked. The cooker was in the back corner of the plant that took up about 1/3 of the building. After it was cooked, it was pressed to eliminate the remaining moisture. Then it was seperated into different products and shipped off to one of their other plants to be further processed and packaged. I asked where the finished product was sent to: they said it was shipped to several different pet food plants. It seems the corporation had several rendering plants and contracts with numerous pet food plants. Not only were dead animals that died who know how were rendered, but also live rats, a lot of rat droppings plus all the dirt and concrete fragments that were removed from the rat holes in the pit and piles of maggots. But "that was ok" because it was just going for the pet food. What they were concerned about was the constant maintenance that the rats were causing by digging holes in the concrete and chewing through hoses and electric lines. 
Maintenance expenses were getting too high and something had to be done. That is why they called me. it took a couple months, and several buckets of dead rats, but I did take care of their rat problem. In the meantime I found out that were a lot of the dead animals and other scaps and pieces came from. There were dead cows, pigs, horses, chickens various road kill, packaged meat from local supermarkets and waste from restaurants and fast food places. The most sickening thing that I saw was trucks that come from chicken farms. I call them chicken prisons that were supposedly full of dead chickens. When they were dumped, 90% of the chickens were dead, however there was always a few that were still alive, if you could call that alive. They were mostly featherless and staggering around obviously sick and dying. The picked them up and threw them into the pit alive to be ground up with the rest of the dump. Most of the cattle from the feed lots and farmers had plastic ear tags impregnated with Dursban or other insecticides that were places there to ward off flies. These tags were not removed, they were ground up with the cattles and the plastic and styrofoam containers that spoiled and rotten meat from the supermarkets came in. When I asked about the ear tags and the plastic and styrofoam they said that they could not afford to pay someone to remove them or unpackage the spoiled meats from the supermarkets. "Besides, they would be eliminated from the end products through rendering process.". 

The point of this is that when you see meat byproducts listed on the label of your pet food, this could be what you could be feeding your pet. So when you see this on the label, I would encourage you to think twice about purchasing the product."


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## EscVelocity (Mar 31, 2011)

Hmmm, no wonder cancer is so common amongst domestic animals....


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## jiml (Jun 19, 2008)

I saw a vid w the head of aafco admitting its possible if the ingredients have an unidentified meat listed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuoSxSJ94RY


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## SpiderGirl (Dec 27, 2009)

Willowy said:


> I agree it's gross not knowing what kind of meat is in your dog's food. . .but why would alligator meat be any grosser than meat from cows or sheep or kangaroos?


Its not that I think gator meat is gross, but, crocodillians are one of my favorite group of animals. I myself will never knowingly eat alligator, snake, or even frog for that matter. Those are borderline "pets" to me. Now kangaroo, I might eat, but I'd have to think about it.


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## Inga (Jun 16, 2007)

I personally would have less problem with my dogs eating other dogs/cats then I would the fact that the euthanasia was in there.


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## BeyondBlessed (Jan 25, 2011)

So putting out the 'gross' factor, how much control can they have over the nutrition of these foods if anything and everything goes in there?


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

BeyondBlessed said:


> So putting out the 'gross' factor, how much control can they have over the nutrition of these foods if anything and everything goes in there?


They can't. That's why Mad Cow Disease and Scrapie became a problem. That's why pets who are fed store brand food look so unhealthy. But they add vitamins to take care of everything! Think of that the next time you see someone plop a big bag of Ol' Roy into their cart. . ..


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