Good canned foods: what to look for?

"PawsForThought" wrote in message

This is for example only and I'm not endorsing either of these foods.
I just wanted to show how one food lists "by-products" and how the
other food will list what it is, "chicken liver."

I've always taken by-product to mean some other part of the animal. For
instance, if you're talking about beef, by-product might be some heart,
liver, kidney, ground ligament, or other bits of the animal.

Upscale wrote:
"PawsForThought" wrote in message

This is for example only and I'm not endorsing either of these foods.
I just wanted to show how one food lists "by-products" and how the
other food will list what it is, "chicken liver."

I've always taken by-product to mean some other part of the animal. For
instance, if you're talking about beef, by-product might be some heart,
liver, kidney, ground ligament, or other bits of the animal.

I used to think that too, but it seems if the ingredient were actually
liver for instance, it would be listed as liver, and not as a
by-product, as in this example:

"By-product: An ingredient produced in the course of making a primary
food ingredient; a secondary or incidental product. Feathers are a
by-product of poultry meat processing. Feathers which are removed from
a carcass during production of poultry meat are then hydrolyzed
(pressure cooked with steam until they are an edible gel) which makes
them an acceptable feed grade ingredient. Hydrolyzed feathers have been
assigned the (IFN) International Feed Number 5-03-795 and can appear on
a label as "Poultry By-products." On page 158 in the AAFCO book,
Official Publication, 1994, Association of American Feed Control
Officials Incorporated, they show: Hydrolyzed Poultry By-Products
Aggregate is the product resulting from heat treatment, or a
combination thereof, of all by-products of slaughter poultry, clean and
undecomposed, including such parts as heads, feet, underdeveloped eggs,
intestines, feathers and blood." The IFN assigned to this mix is
5-14-508. Today's regulations allow the entire mix or any part of it to
appear on a label as "Poultry By-products." A "Fish By-product" can
contain heads, tails, intestines and blood. This fish process residue
has been assigned the IFN 5-07-977. A "Meat By-product" could be
viscera and blood soaked sawdust from the floors of a packing house
where meat is being processed. The meat being processed can be lamb,
beef, horse, or any other source. Each one has its own IFN. Some of the
animal feed IFN's that contain wood shavings from the floor of a
processing facility include "Dried Ruminant Waste" #1-07-526, and
"Undried Processed Animal Waste Products" #5-02-790. It is important to
note that the amount of wood shavings in either of these two "Meat
By-products" is limited and should not be more than 35% in one and 40%
in the other. When a pet food label's list of ingredients shows the
word By-product you can be assured that there is NO measurable amount
of meat in the ingredient. If the ingredient contained enough meat that
it could be measured the pet food company would proudly list the MEAT,
not just the By-product of that meat's production."

AlexZ wrote:
" wrote:

: Cats eat by-product in the wild all the time. What is the implication
: linking by-products and herbivores?? What are you trying to get at?

As I understand it, thanks to pages like
http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.ph...=show&item=004

the problem is not with "byproducts" in a natural setting but with what
gets called "buproducts" in industrial food production. Even good
quality pet food is basically a byproduct of human foods, and what gets
labeled as "byproduct" could be very poor quality in terms of chemical
impurities, diseased meat, etc. Or so I understand thus far.

So the question is not what happens in the wild, but how to safely
inerpret the words used by our industries?

It's a bit more basic than that. You can buy meat meals of any specie
in a dozen different grades. It is easily possible to buy a chicken
meal that contains 20% ash for less money than a chicken by-product
meal that contains 5% ash. That chicken meal may have a digestibility
level of only 50%, while the chciken by product meal may be 80%.
Anytime you attempt to review a pet food based on ingredients alone,
you are doomed to failure. Why? Becasue reading an ingredinet label
alone will not tell you what quality that ingredient is. For example
suppose a pet food contains "chicken". Nothing on the lable tells you
if the "chicken" is highly digestible, contains abroad spectrum of
amino acids, or instead is very low digestibility and contains 20% ash
or ground up bones.

For those reasons you need to look a bit deeper. Review the nutrients
and not the ingredients. No animal uses an "ingredient", they use the
nutrients that the ingredients are suppposed to bring to the table.
Take the time to look at nutrient levels, digestibility, antioxidant
vitamin levels, etc.

PawsForThought wrote:
On page 158 in the AAFCO book,
Official Publication, 1994, Association of American Feed Control
Officials Incorporated,

1994?? you have to be joking right? There have been literally dozens
upons dozens of changes since 1994.


they show: Hydrolyzed Poultry By-Products Aggregate

Nonsense - just let me know what pet food contains that ingredient -
I'd love to see it. Remember that ingredients definitions are hard and
fast, you cannot substitute "hydrolyzed poultry by product aggregate"
for "poultry by products" - they are two separate and distinct
ingredients. Any manufacturer that used "hydrolyzed poultry by
products" would have to use that exact term on the label.


Today's regulations allow the entire mix or any part of it to
appear on a label as "Poultry By-products."

You mean your 12 year old AAFCO regulations - but not "todays"
regulations -
2005 AFFCO Poultry By products is defined as:
" Poultry by-products must consist of non-rendered clean parts of
carcasses of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, viscera, free
from fecal content and foreign matter except in such trace mounts as
might unavoidably ocurr in good factory practice. If the product bears
a name descriptive of its kind, the name must correspond thereto"

It's a good time to remind everyone that there are probably a dozen or
more "grades" of any kind of meat meal - chicken, beef, poultry,
venison, salmon etc. You can buy high quality low ash meals or cheap
high ash meals. The cheaper high ash meals derive that additional ash
from the ground up bones in the meat meal. This can show up in the
finished product in elevated levels of calcium and phosphorus. Remember
that pure muscle meats - regardless of specie - contains about 0.01%
calcium, and there is very little calcium in grains, fats, oils, etc
used in commercial foods. The vast majority of calcium in any food
comes from the meat meals. So how does a finished food end up with 2%
calcium - or 200 times the level of calcium intrinsic to the muscle
tissue? Because of the high levels of ground up bones in the meat
meals.


A "Meat By-product" could be
viscera and blood soaked sawdust

False - there is no provision within the AAFCO definition for generic
meat meal which permits the addition of "sawdust" - that is just silly
internet mythology. The 2005 AAFCO definition of meat By-products is as
follows:

"Meat By-products is the nonrendered, clen parts, other than meat,
derived from slaughtered animals. 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
theri contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth, and hoofsd. It
shall be suitable for use in animal food. If it bears a name
descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto. (Proposed 1973,
Adopted 1974, Amended 1978)"

Since this particular definition has not changed since your antiquated
1994 book was printed, I must assume you suffered a temporary typo
problem and came up with sawdust just for hell of it? Or were you are
being deliberately false in representing that sawdust could be included
in "meat by-products"? Remember the ingredient "must be DERIVED FROM
the slaughtered..." The last time I heard sawdust was derived from
trees, not cows.


Some of the
animal feed IFN's that contain wood shavings from the floor of a
processing facility include "Dried Ruminant Waste" #1-07-526, and
"Undried Processed Animal Waste Products" #5-02-790.

What nonsense - let me know when you see either of those ingredient
descriptions on any pet food, not even Ol Roy uses that stuff. Is this
just a trip down scaremongering lane and you're hoping everyone will
simply ignore the false claims?

You can buy a new book for $50 - but you would still have to learn to
be honest and not add words into ingredient definitions that do no
texist - like "sawdust". When my 2006 book gets back from the binders -
I'll be happy to check and see if there have been any additional
changes.

Steve Crane wrote:
It's a good time to remind everyone that there are probably a dozen or
more "grades" of any kind of meat meal - chicken, beef, poultry,
venison, salmon etc. You can buy high quality low ash meals or cheap
high ash meals. The cheaper high ash meals derive that additional ash
from the ground up bones in the meat meal. This can show up in the
finished product in elevated levels of calcium and phosphorus. Remember
that pure muscle meats - regardless of specie - contains about 0.01%
calcium, and there is very little calcium in grains, fats, oils, etc
used in commercial foods. The vast majority of calcium in any food
comes from the meat meals. So how does a finished food end up with 2%
calcium - or 200 times the level of calcium intrinsic to the muscle
tissue? Because of the high levels of ground up bones in the meat
meals.

Not necessarily. A manufacturer can add calcium to balance the amount
of phosphorous contained in the food. I know you'll say Hill's foods
has less phos but that's because more of their protein comes from
plant/grain sources. Now might be a good time once again to ask you to
remind people that you work for Hill's. Not that you would be
disingenuous of course.

AlexZ wrote:
" wrote:

: Cats eat by-product in the wild all the time. What is the implication
: linking by-products and herbivores?? What are you trying to get at?

As I understand it, thanks to pages like
http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.ph...=show&item=004

The link you provided is coming from a particular point of view and is
not unbiased.


the problem is not with "byproducts" in a natural setting but with what
gets called "buproducts" in industrial food production. Even good
quality pet food is basically a byproduct of human foods, and what gets
labeled as "byproduct" could be very poor quality in terms of chemical
impurities, diseased meat, etc. Or so I understand thus far.

You'd have to call each individual company to ask them. Some are good
and some are bad. You cannot accurately judge a food based off of its
ingredient label. Almost all companies use a least-cost formulation
anyway and so the ingredient label may not reflect what is actually in
the bag. You've got to look at nutrient levels, not individual
ingredients to determine the proper nutrition for your particular cat.


So the question is not what happens in the wild, but how to safely
inerpret the words used by our industries?

Victor Martinez wrote:
wrote:
Meat content: First few items should be meat? (By-products ok?)

Absolutely! Cats are carnivores, nor herbivores. I don't feed by-products.


Cats eat by-product in the wild all the time. What is the implication
linking by-products and herbivores?? What are you trying to get at?

Actually, cats tend not to eat feathers or beaks. I have no idea what
"by-products" actually contains, anything from beaks to diseased
animals. There was no linking anything. If you read the original
sentence, there were two questions asked. Which I answered.

No, that's not necessarily what "by-product" is. Since by your own
admission, you don't know what by-product can be, I don't know why you
automatically jump to the conclusion that it is bad. In the wild, cats
eat "by-product" all the time.

PawsForThought wrote:
snipped the bs

Lauren, where exactly did you get this "definition" for by-product?
Hmm? Perhaps you'd care to use a source that is a) more objective and
b) not more than 12 years old?

As for your "hmm, this is interesting" remark, why don't you let
everybody know that you are a Hill's Hater? You act as if you've just
discovered the ingredient list of a Hill's diet. For someone who hates
Hill's so much, you sure have quick access to a pair of ingredient
lists. You also didn't identify which list went with which product.
That's disingenuous on your part....which isn't anything new.

PawsForThought wrote:
Steve Crane wrote:
It's a good time to remind everyone that there are probably a dozen or
more "grades" of any kind of meat meal - chicken, beef, poultry,
venison, salmon etc. You can buy high quality low ash meals or cheap
high ash meals. The cheaper high ash meals derive that additional ash
from the ground up bones in the meat meal. This can show up in the
finished product in elevated levels of calcium and phosphorus. Remember
that pure muscle meats - regardless of specie - contains about 0.01%
calcium, and there is very little calcium in grains, fats, oils, etc
used in commercial foods. The vast majority of calcium in any food
comes from the meat meals. So how does a finished food end up with 2%
calcium - or 200 times the level of calcium intrinsic to the muscle
tissue? Because of the high levels of ground up bones in the meat
meals.

Not necessarily. A manufacturer can add calcium to balance the amount
of phosphorous contained in the food. I know you'll say Hill's foods
has less phos but that's because more of their protein comes from
plant/grain sources. Now might be a good time once again to ask you to
remind people that you work for Hill's. Not that you would be
disingenuous of course.

So tell us why a particular manufacturer would add excessively high
levels of calcium to balance out excessively high levels of phosphorus?
Are you advocating such a position? At least Steve comments from a
position of authority on the matter. You, on the other hand, have no
knowledge or background on the matter. Which could explain why your
previous posts in this thread are so misinformed.

Oh, and another question, Lauren. Just how much protein or phosphorus
do you think is contained in "plant/grain" sources?

PawsForThought wrote:
Now might be a good time once again to ask you to
remind people that you work for Hill's. Not that you would be
disingenuous of course.

I thought about that a couple weeks ago, but since you've taken it upon
yourself to follow me around to various NG's and make this proclamation
yourself, there really isn't much need for me to do so anymore is
there. It's like having my own personal secretary. Neat! Thanks for
the help.