AAFCO Admits Rendered Pets in Pet Food

[Sheenar]

"For those who were still on the fence, here’s a just released video of AAFCO’s president finally admitting, on camera, that it’s allowable (and, in fact, fairly common practice) for rendered pets to end up in pet food."

Article

This shows that it is very important to read the labels on pet food. Look for food that specifically mentions chicken, beef, venison, etc. instead of the generic "meat and bone meal."

I know several people here own one or more animals, so I figured this would be helpful info to know.

[ShiroiHikari]

This is absolutely horrifying.

[Strafe]

Hey so wait... Dog eat Dog literally. That's cannibalism. And poisoned cannibalism. yummy? I hope not. So as a result of this, would dogs go find a dead dog, sniff it, find out that it smells like their food, and eat it? That's... nasty...

[CrimsonRyu17]

Hey so wait... Dog eat Dog literally. That's cannibalism. And poisoned cannibalism. yummy? I hope not. So as a result of this, would dogs go find a dead dog, sniff it, find out that it smells like their food, and eat it? That's... nasty...

No because the dog food is mixed in with other things not just pure dog.

Cannibalism isn't such a big deal in the animal world anyway. It's very common so I don't see why it would be nasty. Meat is meat and protein is protein. But the only time dogs cannibalize is when they are starving and have nothing else. So unless your dog is starving then I wouldn't worry about them cannibalizing other dogs dead or not.

However, the reason this is taken so seriously is because there are a lot of issues and risks in taking euthanized, diseased and rotting animals, mixing it all up, and then turning it into food. There's poison in euthanized animals, there's usually disease in dead livestock, and then there's the risk of both disease and bad bacteria in roadkill. This is why people are so upset about it. You could be potentially slowly poisoning your pet or God knows what.

[Strafe]

Oh ok. Got it. So that's what the big deal is then. Lol. I guess cannibalism is not the main issue.

[Tsukuyomi]

Seconds what Shiroi said. That's just.. wrong/weird.. whatever you want to call it.

[minakichan]

Oh ew, that's disgusting! I'm never eating dog food again!

[ShiroiHikari]

What makes this even scarier, at least to me, is what could happen if these practices continue. Don't cows get mad cow disease from eating the brain tissue of other cows? Could something like this possibly happen with dogs and cats as well?

[MomentOfInertia]

Before you complain about this think of what the alternatives are, these guys are using stuff that would otherwise probably end up in a landfill of as fertilizer.

Also from Wikipedia

An alternative process cooks slaughterhouse offal to produce a thick lumpy stew which is then sold to the pet food industry to be used principally as tinned cat and dog foods.

So it's had all the bacteria/diseases cooked out of it, I don't know about the euthanize-ing stuff though...

What makes this even scarier, at least to me, is what could happen if these practices continue. Don't cows get mad cow disease from eating the brain tissue of other cows? Could something like this possibly happen with dogs and cats as well?

If you read further down in the wiki page is says that, because of the durability of mad cow disease they feed rendered cow only to creatures that can't get mad cow disease, also no one has found any pet diseases that are as resilient as mad cow.

[CrimsonRyu17]

What makes this even scarier, at least to me, is what could happen if these practices continue. Don't cows get mad cow disease from eating the brain tissue of other cows? Could something like this possibly happen with dogs and cats as well?

Mad Cow Disease affected the brain and spinal cord but could be found anywhere within the cow from tissue to blood. The disease itself was transmitted because cows were fed the MBM (meat and bone meal) from the infected cows, yes.

Something like Mad Cow could very well happen again. Like I said, God knows what exactly could happen. I do remember reading somewhere that pets fed MBM made from euthanized animals were more resistant to the euthanasia when it was their time to go. This resulted in more euthanasia having to be used and if that animal that had high doses of euthanasia was made into feed it could put your pet to sleep or make it sick. Not sure how authentic this is but it could be a possibility. I'll have to do more research on this.

Before you complain about this think of what the alternatives are, these guys are using stuff that would otherwise probably end up in a landfill of as fertilizer.

Sorry, this statement doesn't make any sense to me. The animals are eating this stuff and animals do poop so it's going to end up in the ground either way. Doesn't matter if it was passed through an animal's digestive system or treated into fertilizer. At least if its made into fertilizer then it could help grow something that isn't potentially harming someone's pet.

EDIT: After doing a little more research, MBM isn't all bad. It's being used as a fossil-fuel replacement and the UK uses meat and bone meal for the generation of renewable electricity. It's even being used as an environmentally sustainable replacement for coal. Those are some much better alternatives to using MBM instead of feeding it to pets and again, potentially harming them.

[Solid Ronin]