Unfit for Humans — Legal for Dog Food?
DogFoodAdvisor is reader supported See how
Dog Food Advisor is 100% impartial and is never paid to promote any brand. But if you buy using links on this page, we may earn a referral fee.
Manufacturing waste — that endless flow of scraps and rejects left over from virtually every human food enterprise.
Restaurants. Meat packers. Cereal makers. Supermarkets.
They all produce waste.
Yet each and every day, every one of them must ultimately face the same vexing problem:
What to do with tons of inedible waste — by-products classified “unfit for human consumption”.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all that garbage could be recycled… re-used to generate more cash profits for the food industry?
But for making what?
Turning Trash Into Cash
Think about it. What industry could be routinely counted on to purchase such unwanted leftovers — and use them to make a salable (money-making) product?
You guessed it — the pet food industry.
You see, pet food companies have become an important waste disposal vehicle for the human food industry. A sinister way for manufacturers to use — and profit from — their own garbage.
Many companies practice this legal form of witchcraft by magically turning their own worthless by-products into dog food. And (of course) profit.
For proof, look no further than this list of unsavory ingredients. Yet even though they’re appalling, each one can be lawfully used to make dog food:
- Slaughterhouse waste (organs, heads, hooves, beaks, feet)
- Expired laboratory animals (monkeys, rats, guinea pigs)
- Bread and cereal rejects (cobs, stalks, mill sweepings)
- Dying, diseased and disabled farm animals
- Road kill (deer, skunks, raccoons)
- Contaminated grain middlings
- Distiller fermentation waste
- Euthanized cats and dogs
- Spoiled supermarket food
- Restaurant grease
- Dead zoo animals
- Peanut shells
A dog food’s ingredients list can present a cryptic picture — hiding some of the most grisly and outrageous food rejects you can imagine.
So, when picking dog food, always watch for words like unidentified meats, by-products, middlings or “tail-of-the-mill”. Any one could be a tip-off you’re about to buy an inferior product.
Final word
The Dog Food Advisor does not accept money, gifts, samples or other incentives in exchange for special consideration in preparing our reviews.
However, we do receive a referral fee from online retailers (like Chewy or Amazon) and from sellers of perishable pet food when readers click over to their websites from ours. This helps cover the cost of operation of our free blog. Thanks for your support.
For more information, please visit our Disclaimer and Disclosure page.