Rejected Meat

Explaining the 4D's

By Deb Dempsey

How many times have you seen dog food commercials featuring juicy steaks and plump fresh chickens, not so subtly implying that is the main component in their food? Public relations firms create these visions on behalf of pet food companies because the general public would probably faint if they knew what was really being incorporated in their pet’s food.

A little background into commercial pet food

Commercial pet food companies began sprouting up in earnest in the 1920s and 1930s in part because cereal companies and meat producers needed an outlet for increasing amounts of product deemed unsuitable for human consumption. Cereal companies had a plethora of wheat, rice and corn that failed USDA inspection and meat producers had thousands of tons of meat that they were unable to sell due to spoiling or diseased livestock. Rather than throw away rejected grain and spoiled meat, resourceful companies came up with the idea to incorporate their leftovers into pet food. Thus, commercial pet food became the original recycle bin for the human food industry.

What the heck is 4D "meat"?

To this day, large pet food companies incorporate meat unfit for human consumption into their pet foods. This meat is known to insiders as 4D meat and includes meat from DISEASED, DISABLED, DOWNER and already DEAD animals when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. We’ve all seen the horrific images of cows being pushed by forklifts across slaughterhouse floors in an effort to make them walk for USDA inspectors. If a cow cannot walk on its’ own accord to slaughter, that cow is considered a disabled or downer cow and is therefore unfit for your plate. If a cow dies in the stockyards or is severely diseased, again the USDA inspector would reject that particular cow for our own food supply – but it is apparently good enough for your dog, as the stockyard then sends that carcass to the nearest renderer for use in pet food, thereby salvaging some of their profit.

And just what is rendering?

Rendering, by definition, is the process of melting animal products in a large vat, which separates the fat-soluble ingredients from water-soluble ingredients and solid materials. This process is designed to kill most bacterial contaminants, but the valuable natural enzymes and proteins contained in the raw materials are also often destroyed or changed in some way. The FDA / CVM (Center for Veterinary Medicine) reported on February 28, 2002 that, “Pentobarbital seems to be able to survive the rendering process. If animals are euthanized with pentobarbital and subsequently rendered, pentobarbital could be present in the rendered feed ingredients.” FDA scientists concluded that “the low levels of exposure to sodium pentobarbital that dogs might receive through food is unlikely to cause them any adverse health effects.” Unlikely? Does that ease your mind? It personally makes me wonder what other contaminants can survive the rendering process.

The consumer is left in the dark

Luckily for the pet food companies, you’ll never find reference to rendering on the ingredient panel of your pets’ food.AAFCO, the Association of American Feed Control Officials Incorporated sets guidelines for pet food ingredient panels and outlines official feed definitions in their Annual Publication. While AAFCO allows manufacturers to utilize unsavory ingredients such as “recycled animal waste products” or “poultry hatchery by-product” without blinking an eye, they consider the term “human-grade” to be a claim that would need to be backed up through a complicated process of red tape. It is virtually impossible to find a pet food company that lists human-grade ingredients on their label, which would ideally help a consumer to avoid feeding their pet 4D meat.

Teresa Crenshaw, acting chair of AAFCO’s pet food committee explained to me that “there is nothing in the AAFCO regulations that specifically addresses humangrade ingredients for pet foods.” She went on to explain that in AAFCO’s eyes, “the claim of human-grade ingredients imply to a consumer that the food is acceptable for human consumption even though the final product has never been inspected by any health agencies.” She felt that the term human-grade would “give the impression that the food was of higher quality than it really is.” Ms. Crenshaw was only aware of one pet food that had ever received approval from the FDA to make that claim on their label and it sounds as if the company had to go to great lengths to accomplish that goal. So let me repeat – pet food companies are allowed to quietly use 4-D “meat” as a protein source in pet food but yet, they are not allowed to tell consumers if they are using human-grade ingredients. One has to wonder if this practice protects consumers or pet food manufacturers who opt to utilize unsavory ingredients.

Euthanized pets in pet food

During my phone conversation with the acting chair of AAFCO’s pet food committee, the practice of utilizing euthanized pets as an ingredient in pet foods came up. For years, savvy animal lovers have suspected that euthanized pets from veterinary offices and shelters were ending up in pet food. Ms. Crenshaw admitted that there is an “abundance of protein that comes from animals that are put down at shelters and they are often picked up by renderers. Most pet food companies, however, sign agreements that they will not take rendered product that contains euthanized animals.”

The ethical problem lies, however, in the term “most.” If all pet food companies don’t sign contracts like that, how is a consumer to know if the food they are feeding to their pets contains euthanized dogs and cats? Again, AAFCO would consider a reference to this a “claim” that we will probably never see on a bag of dog food, thereby protecting manufacturers who choose to use this ingredient. “It would be a difficult thing to prove in order to make that claim,” Ms. Crenshaw pointed out. Kurt Gallagher of the Pet Food Institute (a national lobbying firm that represents the majority of pet food manufacturers in the U.S.) explained that, “As a condition of membership, no Pet Food Institute member may utilize any material in their products that is derived from cats and dogs.” Consumers can find a list of PFI member companies at www.petfoodinstitute.org.

So how can you ensure your pets are not being fed 4D meat? After learning about these behind-the-scenes recycling practices, you may be asking yourself how you can avoid feeding these types of things to your beloved pet. It’s not as easy as you might think. Thanks to AAFCO’s stringent restrictions, a consumer cannot easily decipher the answer to this question simply by looking at a pet food label.