Chicken Compared To Chicken Meal
Posted: Friday, February 18, 2005
by Sean L
When selecting the best dry food for your dog, why is it better to go with the chicken meal than the pure chicken?
Chicken meal is simply chicken that has been baked to remove bacteria and other toxins. Chicken is simply pure chicken.
What people dont know about chicken, is that it is made mostly of water. If a label on a bag of dog food says %60 whole chicken, that is quite misleading as that does not take into account how much of that %60 of chicken is left after baking it to remove unwanted substances!
Explanation:
Converting dry matter basis This can be the hard part. All pet foods have different levels of moisture. Canned foods can have up to 80% moisture whereas, some dry foods can have as little as 6%. This is important for 2 reasons. The first is that the food is priced by the pound, and when you buy dog food that is 80% water you get 20% food and the rest is water. So the amount of food your pet consumes is small and expensive. The other reason for understanding percent moisture is to help you compare crude protein and fat between brands and between canned and dry. The listings on the label are for the food as it is, not as it would be on a dry matter basis. So without converting both brands of food to a dry matter basis you will not be able to compare them accurately. Fortunately, the conversion is not that complicated.
If a dry dog food has 10% moisture we know that it has 90% dry matter. So we look at the label and check the protein level that reads 20%. Next, we divide the 20 percent protein by the 90% dry matter and we get 22%, which is the amount of protein on a dry matter basis. Does this make sense so far? Good. Now let us compare this to canned food that has 80% moisture. We know that with 80% moisture we have 20% dry matter. The label shows 5% protein. So we take the 5% and divide it by 20% and we get 25% protein on a dry matter basis. So the canned food has more protein per pound on a dry matter basis after all the water is taken out. We can do the same for fat, fiber, etc.
Good luck calculating!
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More commentsTrue. Steve from Ohio and a few others actually provided the accurate information as to the difference between chicken meal and chicken by-product. Quite a number of people had it 'bass-ackwards'.The other thing I really like is when a person attacks another claiming that they're wrong about their info but offer zip-zero-nada in support of their own assertion...wonderful reasoning process there!
Straight for the aafco's site : chicken meal is generally a lesser quality of protein source than chicken meat.make sure you read examples
Definition: Chicken Meal: chicken which has been ground or otherwise reduced in particle size.Examples: Chicken meal is often used in dry cat food. The quality of the protein will depend on the type and amount of chicken meat in the mixture, as well as the amount of bone and connective tissue processed with the meat. Although better than chicken by-product meal, chicken meal is generally a lesser quality of protein source than chicken meat.
I work for a premium dog food company. Just to be clear, fresh chicken has to be processed, ie. baked, cooked, dried, for it to go in dry dog food, and of course it's to ensure safety. To think that 'fresh chicken with all that water' doesn't get cooked down and dried anyways to go into a big of kibble is ridiculous. So knowing it all needs to be baked, what's the difference between 'chicken' and 'chicken meal', according to this writer? I quote:"Chicken meal is simply chicken that has been baked to remove bacteria and other toxins. Chicken is simply pure chicken."Simply, huh??!
Liz and a few others are the only that have commented correctly. Any assertion that your pet should be eating processed food from a bag is just ridiculous. BTW dogs and cats thrive from raw meat, bone and organs..not Nutro or Solid Gold etc... Nice try. And if you are worried about bacteria...um, my dog licks his butt as does yours. Stop reading these useless claims on the internet and go watch Animal Planet. If you see any wolves, dogs, cats, or lion's cooking their food, please call Ripley...hell may freeze over.LOL. Next they'll have us cooking our cats' mice.
I'm so confused! I just want to know the literal definition of chicken-meal.
Chicken meal if you trust the company is fine. The problem is it opens itself up to having by-products thrown in to cheapen the cost of making the food. If Blue buffalo or Naural Balnce makes a food with meal I would have a better ime trusting them than if Nutro or Iams or Purina makes a food with meal. If it ever got out that a premium food was tainted that food is toast. The really good companies would not let that happen.I thought that IAMS was included in the big pet recall of last year? it seems that I read that there are only a few companies making all the food. this is copied off the born free web site. you can get all the recalls on the FDA web site
Pet Food Recalls
When things go really wrong and serious problems are discovered in pet food, the company usually works with the FDA to coordinate a recall of the affected products. While many recalls have been widely publicized, quite a few have not.
•In 1995, Nature’s Recipe recalled almost a million pounds of dry dog and cat food after consumers complained that their pets were vomiting and losing their appetite. The problem was a fungus that produced vomitoxin contaminating the wheat.
•In 1999, Doane Pet Care recalled more than a million bags of corn-based dry dog food contaminated with aflatoxin. Products included Ol’ Roy (Wal-Mart’s brand) and 53 other brands. This time, the toxin killed 25 dogs.
•In 2000, Iams recalled 248,000 pounds of dry dog food distributed in 7 states due to excess DL-Methionine Amino Acid, a urinary acidifier.
•In 2003, a recall was made by Petcurean “Go! Natural" pet food due to circumstantial association with some dogs suffering from liver disease; no cause was ever found.
•In late 2005, a similar recall by Diamond Foods was announced; this time the moldy corn contained a particularly nasty fungal product called aflatoxin; 100 dogs died.
•Also in 2005, 123,000 pounds of cat and dog treats were recalled due to Salmonella contamination.
•In 2006, more than 5 million cans of Ol’ Roy, American Fare, and other dog foods distributed in the southeast were recalled by the manufacturer, Simmons Pet Food, because the cans’ enamel lining was flaking off into the food.
•Also in 2006, Merrick Pet Care recalled almost 200,000 cans of “Wingalings" dog food when metal tags were found in some samples.
•In the most deadly recall of 2006, 4 prescription canned dog and cat foods were recalled by Royal Canin (owned by Mars). The culprit was a serious overdose of Vitamin D that caused calcium deficiency and kidney disease.
•In February 2007, the FDA issued a warning to consumers not to buy “Wild Kitty," a frozen food containing raw meat. Routine testing by FDA had revealed Salmonella in the food. FDA specifically warned about the potential for illness in humans, not pets. There were no reports of illness or death of any pets, and the food was not recalled.
•In March 2007, the most lethal pet food in history was the subject of the largest recall ever. Menu Foods recalled more than 100 brands including Iams, Eukanuba, Hill’s Science Diet, Purina Mighty Dog, and many store brands including Wal-Mart’s. Thousands of pets were sickened (the FDA received more than 17,000 reports) and an estimated 20% died from acute renal failure caused by the food. Cats were more frequently and more severely affected than dogs. The toxin was initially believed to be a pesticide, the rat poison “aminopterin" in one of the ingredients. In April, scientists discovered high levels of melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, in wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate imported from China. The melamine had been purposefully added to the ingredients to falsely boost their protein content. Subsequent tests revealed that the melamine-tainted ingredients had also been used in feed for cows, pigs, and chickens and thousands of animals were quarantined and destroyed. In early May, scientists identified the cause of the rapid onset kidney disease that had appeared in dogs and cats as a reaction caused by the combination of melamine and cyanuric acid, both unauthorized chemicals. The fallout from this recall is ongoing as of May 2007 so please be sure to check the FDA website for the most recent updates.
yes but what really is a GOOD dog food with out all the nasty s from the slaughter house.??? so the chicken in all dog foods are really pointless then as they are dried out and so on , dogs are our family, we need not to be lied to by the companies and charge us all an arm and a leg, i use to make my own dog food but the cost was high i do feed veg, but i really want to find that top all good dry dog food, where is it.??????
YES, good article. Also important to feed your dog holistic foods. Meat by-products have almost no meat, but they do contain euthanized cats/dogs, road kill, plastic bags, collars of dead animals, shavings, beaks, brains, animals that are already dead, dying, diseased, or disabled at slaughter time. Cheap foods with corn and gluten are no good as well.
Wow . I understand that you guys are saying that you feed your dogs raw meat because they are dogs. That seems so wrong to me. My dog is like my child. I would never want her to eat raw chicken. or raw anything.research it.
I have no idea why they even allow by-products and 4-d things in a pets food? just another way to dispose of unwanted ingredients? It's just sickening!
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