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Even wood
("cellulose", "cellulose
pulp") can find its way into the mix - the
blood-soaked sawdust on the slaughterhouse floor
may be swept up with the offal and be rendered.
Some meat by-products can legally contain blood
soaked sawdust from the packing house floor. Dried
Ruminant Waste may contain up to 35% sawdust and
Undried Processed Animal Waste may contain up to
40% sawdust. There are health concerns about
sawdust sweepings in cat food. Sawdust is a
by-product from timber mills and the wood it comes
from may have been chemically treated before the
wood is sawn into planks. Many wood preservers are
highly toxic, particularly to cats.
Take a look at the
label - how many of the listed ingredients are
vegetable products? How much of the kibble is dyed
green to make it look like your cat is having a
side order of peas with his beef? Often 2 out of
the top 3 ingredients will be cereal or grain e.g.
Ground Yellow Corn, Corn Gluten Meal or simply
"cereal and vegetable derivatives". Cats
are true carnivores; vegetables do not contain all
the proteins they need (especially taurine, found
only in meat). Some cats enjoy a few bits of
vegetable or fruit for a change in taste, but the
only reason cereal or soy to appears in commercial
cat food is that these ingredients are cheaper
than meat.
Even though the
ingredients may state: "Beef, rice, cornmeal,
beet pulp" in that order, the total amount of
the 3 listed vegetable ingredients may be greater
than the amount of the single listed meat
ingredient! The following list (page 5) gives common pet
food and meat industry labeling terms. I have
tried to indicate which country the term applies
to since food regulations, terms and definitions
differ from country to country. The description
indicates the type of content, but not the
quality of the content.
Meat Based Ingredients
 Animal
by-products (US)
AAFCO
define these as parts not used for human
consumption e.g. kidney, lung and tripe.
By-products are secondary or incidental
products of the meat industry e.g.
feathers, hair. Poultry by-products
contains head, feet, underdeveloped eggs,
intestines, feathers and blood. Fish
by-products are fish process residues and
can contain heads, tails, intestines and
blood. Meat by-products can include hair,
hooves, viscera and also the blood soaked
sawdust.
Animal
by-products (UK)
Unprocessed
fresh or frozen slaughterhouse material.
Processed material including blood meal,
meat meal, meat and bone meal, greaves
(the dry remnants left over after fat
rendering)
Continued Over
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