What’s Really In Dry Dog Food-The Awful Truth!

Woof there!

It’s me again, your friend Doglicious!

In this post, I’m going to give you a detailed description of where dog food manufacturers get the “meat and fat” ingredients they use to make the dry foods that you doggie persons are feeding a dog.

I’ll go into much more detail about each of the additional ingredients ie: other by-products, fillers, additives, presevatives, contaminants, etc., in some of my next posts…but right now I’m going to focus on just the ”meat and fat”.

So, if any of you have delicate stomachs, prepare yourself…this won’t be pretty! However, I think this is important enough that I let you have the awful truth about what’s “really” in those attractively packaged commercial dry dog food bags on store shelves.

If you consider your dog a cherished member of your family (like I fortunately am) and you feed your dog commercial dry dog food, you need to listen up and learn all you can about what’s actually in those bags. Once you read my posts and know the truth, I hope you’ll feel you should make whatever changes or adjustments you think are necessary in your dog’s food. Feeding a dog a safe and nutritious diet is essential in protecting him or her from anything that potentially can cause harm.

So, if you’re still reading this, I assume your dog’s health is important to you and you care about what goes into his or her mouth. In order to get (and keep) your dog in optimal health, follow me (I’m your “Seeing Eye Dog”, remember?)…I’m going to open your eyes to the messy world of dry dog food. After you read this entire post and watch the videos below…you’ll see what I mean.

What’s Really In The Bag? A Look At “Meat And Fat”!

Today, we’re going to take an in-depth look at “meat and fat” and the process of rendering.

With dog food manufacturers selling tons of dry dog foods every year, do you ever wonder what’s really in those bags and how the dog food manufacturers get their meat and other ingredients they put in them? Do you think they have big cattle ranches and poultry farms, or grain farms and vegetable gardens somewhere where they raise their own healthy livestock, wholesome grains and fresh vegetables?

Wrong!…the truth is very far from it!

For the “meat and fat” material, they depend on rendering plants to supply them with the tonnage they need to make their products. Rendering plants actually play a rather necessary role in society for public health reasons. Without them, our city streets, public highways and country roads would have diseased, dead and decaying bodies of animals pile up everywhere…it’s a filthy business but someone has to do it.

In the early part of the twentieth century, staughterhouses did much of their own rendering, but after the war it became a completely segregated industry and as a result, these separate rendering plants escaped many federal regulations required for meat processing plants. So now that the industry is not under any authoritative or public scrutiny like the slaughterhouses are, it primarily polices itself…not a good thing.

As stated in my previous post, animals that are dead, dying, diseased, or disabled prior to reaching the slaughterhouse (also known as “downers” or “4D” animals) and usually condemned, in whole or in part, for human consumption, are generally sent for rendering. Also sent, are other by-product parts and items that are unwanted or unsuitable for human use…these can include, but are not limited to, out-of-date or spoiled grocery store/supermarket meats (including their plastic wrappers and styrofoam trays), cut-away infected and cancerous tissue, and fetal tissue (which is very high in hormones).

In order for any raw slaughterhouse material (which is one of the renderers main sources of raw material) to be sent to renderers, government regulation requires that it be “denatured” prior to it being delivered to the renderer. That means it must purposely be contaminated and made unfit for human consumption, so as prevent it from ever being able to be used for human consumption. What “denatured” means literally is it must first be soaked in carbolic acid, creosote, fuel oil, kerosene, citronella, etc. (Grrrr!!! sounds very scary!), “before” it goes to the renderer.

Another huge source of material for renderers are veterinarians, sanitation workers and animal control people (me and my buddies call them “Dog Catchers”). They not only deliver euthanized dogs, cats and other pets (all in plastic bags, some with flea and leather or plastic collars still on), but also road kill like raccoons, skunks, rats, possum, deer, fox, rabbits, snakes….etc. I knew you’d be shocked…I was too when I learned this!…but that’s not all!

There’s the grocery/supermarket and restaurant industries. As I said earlier, grocery stores and supermarkets need a way to dispose of spoiled meat, fat, bones, etc (what dog persons think of as trash or garbage) and restaurants also need an outlet to get rid of their spoiled ingredients and used grease.

So, the rendering plant receives piles and piles of this waste, all of it considered eligible for conversion into the various named “meats” to be used in manufacturing dog food. There in those piles is a conglomeration of both whole and parts of animals, plastic bags, styrofoam packaging, metal tags, pet collars, flea collars…just about anything deemed waste, but yet all fine for recycling into byproducts to be used in your dog’s food.

Now let me explain the process of rendering, which is a means of removing all of the moisture and fat from the material. There are workers inside the plant wearing masks (because the stench is so bad!) and using huge farm equipment to load the raw material into enormous pits, where at the bottom a giant drill/grinding machine converts the large pile into smaller portions, so it can be transferred to another grinder for fine shredding. Everything goes into these grinders…plastic bags, pesticide ear tags from cattle, flea collars from pets, styrofoam and all…they don’t even bother to remove any of it, they just load it all in with the tractors and cook it for an hour at 280 degrees. I warned you it isn’t pretty!

This is a cooking process that enables a layer of yellow grease to rise to the top, which then gets skimmed off. The cooked gunk (including the metal, pesticides, etc.) is then sent to a pressing machine where any remaining moisture gets squeezed and pulverized into a gritty powder. After each batch is finished, yellow grease, “meat” and bone meal is what remains. This is a continuous process that goes on 24/7, producing tons and tons of this gunk!

Depending on the particular key ingredient of each batch, the gunk then becomes…beef, chicken, lamb, meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, beef fat, chicken fat, yellow grease, tallow, etc…it’s never labeled what it “actually” is ie: cat meal, dog meal, skunk meal, or any of the other gruesome ingredients that are included in those daily batches of raw material.

As for the fat sold to dog food manufacturers by the rendering industry, you should know that it does not only come from animal sources. Due to the enormous increase in the fast food restaurant industry, nearly half of the “raw material” is waste from used restaurant kitchen grease and frying oil. Pet food manufacturers depend on this source of fat, it’s what they spray on the kibble nuggets after it’s been through the drying process.

Although the entire rendering process kills beneficial enzymes, it doesn’t eliminate the sodium phenoarbital that was used to euthanize the animals that were rendered, and there’s also the real possibility that other dangerous chemicals were not degraded in the process either, which is of great concern. Maybe, instead of calling them rendering plants, it would be more accurate to call them “toxic waste” recycling plants.

So, I guess you figured out by now who some of the renders biggest customers are? That’s right…it’s the pet food manufacturers! The number one source of meat and fat in commercial pet food comes from renderers. Once they get through adding filler and their own, so called, “enhancers” ie: food dye, preservatives, synthetic vitamins, (grrrrr!)…who knows what else is in the bag.

What’s really frightening is that tons of this gunk also goes to dairy and hog farms, chicken farms, cattle feed lots, fish feed plants, etc and is mixed with other ingredients to feed the animals and fish, which are eventually eaten by you dog persons and your families. So, it’s not just us dogs who are at risk from all that processed gunk!

Once you learn by reading my blogs and watching the videos, what actually goes into the production of all commercial dry dog food you’ll understand why many of the health issues your dog may suffer are most likely due to poor nutrition and the harmful ingredients in commercial dog foods. You’ll also understand why so many dog health advocates, holistic veterinarians (I call them”dogtors”) and canine nutrition professionals are against most commercial dry dog foods.

There are some “dogtors” who claim that feeding a dog slaughterhouse waste increases their risk of cancer and other serious debilitating diseases. This is because the processing methods used by the dog food producers, such as rendering, extruding (a heat-and-pressure system used to “puff” dry foods into nuggets or kibbles), and baking, do not necessarily destroy the hormones used to fatten livestock or increase milk production, or the drugs such as antibiotics or barbiturates used to euthanize animals. What can feeding a dog ingredients like these, that actually are in commercial dry dog foods, do to your dog?

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different dog foods available, and although many of them are similar, not all of the manufacturers use poor quality or potentially dangerous ingredients. Some decent ones can be found out there. They are mostly the smaller, independent companies that produce high quality foods and are really careful to include whole, healthy ingredients and provide more than just minimal amounts of nutrients, plus they include other items (like enzymes, probiotics, balanced omega fatty acids) that offer really great health benefits but are often entirely ignored in poor quality brands.

Also, please keep in mind that the “quality” of any one particular ingredient is extremely important. Premium grades of ingredients will not be as likely to cause as many health problems for your dog as the poorer quality, feed grade ones that may be contaminated with all sorts of toxic substances that make them unfit for human (or canine!) consumption.

Your dog is more likely to develop allergies on a poor quality diet, which contains common feed-grade contents like corn, soy meal, wheat byproducts, beef byproducts, generic fats and synthetic preservatives than on a high quality food made from wholesome ingredients such as, non-condemned, antibiotic and hormone free beef and organ meats, human grade grains, whole, unfragmented soy and nutritionally valuable fats and oils that are preseved naturally.

An even better alternative to commercial dog food, for feeding a dog, may be a homemade diet (I get one and I love it!). Have you ever given any thought to feeding your dog a raw diet….or, maybe just adding some raw meat and fresh vegetables to dry food for nutritional value?

Think about it…there are some real nutritional benefits to feeding a dog a balanced diet of raw foods (meat and veggies, along with some whole grains). If you were to add some meat, chopped or shredded fresh vegetables and fruits to the dried food, it would really be beneficial and would contribute more nourishment than feeding a dog only the highly processed contents in commercial dry dog foods!

If, however, you prefer the convenience of a store bought commercial dog food diet over a raw one, and want to just keep feeding your dog commercial dry dog food, then at least add a digestive enzyme to give your dog some assistance with it’s already burdened digestive system.  And, if you must use a dry food, here are three pretty decent choices, recommended by holistic vets (“dogtors”), Wysong, Wellness and Precise.

You can find all three brands at my person’s website: Feeding A Dog in the “DogMall” section, located on the top menu bar. Once you are on the “DogMall” page, just click the link at the bottom to enter the mall and type one of those brand names in the search box…it will show you the various selections available for that brand and you can purchase whichever one you choose.

I’ve heard some dog persons say they’re afraid of raw meat and are reluctant to feed it to their dog because of the possibility of salmonella contamination. In that case, I suggest they visit a rendering plant and see for themselves just how bad that commercial gunk really is! I doubt (after seeing that) if they’ll ever buy another bag of dry dog food without knowing what they’re really getting in it. And, I doubt they’ll have any fear of using “fresh” raw meats, instead.

Have you been thinking about finally leaving commercial pet food behind and moving on to better, healthier feeding options for your dog. For those of you who have not switched to a raw or homemade diet and are not yet ready to, I suggest you visit my person’s website:Feeding A Dog and read more about raw and other homemade diets in the Dog Food Recipes section. You’ll get some great information there to help you make a fundamental decision about the type of diet you want to feed your dog.

So, there you have it, a graphic description of where the “meat and fat” components contained in commercial dry dog foods come from (did it open your eyes like I promised?). I warned you it wouldn’t be pretty! I truly hope you (and most of all, your dog) benefit from this post and my future posts and that I provided some valuable information you can utilize when feeding a dog. It’s my mission to help all of my doggie buddies and their persons find the optimal choices for healthy daily eating and long disease free lives…Dogs Rule!

*Remember!… have fresh water available to your dog at all times, especially in the warmer months, as they can easily become dehydrated.

Thanks for reading my “mutterings”! …See you back here soon…..

Your Buddy,

“Doglicious”

Here are the videos…

Click Here For “Dog Food Secrets And The ”the dogfoodconspiracy.com”

Important Notice! Although we are long time dog enthusiasts and dog advocates, we are not veterinarians or professional animal nutritionists. Our purpose is strictly to provide you with information, so that you can make your own informed decisions. Any and all information contained within or stated on this web site and on our blog is provided for general information purposes. The information provided is not direct veterinary advice and should not be construed as such nor substituted for a consultation with a veterinarian or dog nutrition professional. Every dog and situation is different. If you have any concerns about your dog’s health, please contact your veterinarian’s office immediately.

We all love our dogs and want only the very best for them!

“In Dogs We Trust”

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