Digestible Dog NewsNips™

Feathers Are “MEAT MEAL”

Two major dog food company suppliers fined $7 million for misbranded ingredients but they are offshore so can you trust these premium dog food brands?

International All-Breeds/Sieger Judge Fred Lanting sent this October 2018 notice from Newser “A federal judge in St. Louis has ordered two companies to pay a combined $7 million for shipping ingredients containing poultry feathers and other misbranded items to pet food manufacturers. Wilbur-Ellis Feed pleaded guilty in April. Diversified Ingredients Inc. pleaded guilty in July.”

“Misbranded items” as in beaks, feet, hooves, tails, intestines (and contents) and heads including the brain which could carry diseases capable of surviving an autoclave!

So who is Wilbur-Ellis Feed? They self-describe as having “our own processing facilities in New Zealand, combined with strategic supply partners across North America, New Zealand, and Australia”. Their pet food products “range from fishmeal sourced from the tip of Chile to animal coproducts from Australia and vegetable coproducts from Idaho.” The feed company claims “quality and safety program unparalleled by other companies of Wilbur-Ellis’ size.”

Not according to our A/P feed which reports Wilbur-Ellis Feed and Diversified Ingredients Inc. were sentenced Thursday. Federal authorities say Wilbur-Ellis substituted lower cost “hydrolyzed poultry feathers” for ingredients listed as “chicken and turkey meal”.

This is not new so your dogs have probably already eaten significant amounts of turkey and chicken feathers. The company claimed the feathers were not harmful to dogs. Incredibly Royal Canin introduced an “anallergenic” line of dog foods made with feather meal. The food is designed for intensely allergic dogs who haven’t been helped by novel protein diets” as reported by Dr. Mercola in July of 2013.

This should make you question paying upwards of $1.00 per pound dry weight for commercially produced dog food, much of it slaughter waste such as feet, feathers, and beaks. Let’s see, how much does ground corn or wheat cost per pound? Business Insider says ground corn is 0.58 USD per lb. or under $58 a bushel which contains 56 pounds of shelled corn. Wheat is under $5 per bushel, about 0.11 cents p/lb. In 2016 CNBC reported beef steak retailed for $6.90 p/lb. but according to beefproducer.com beef is down to $5.60 per pound in 2018.

The point is that feathers are a tiny fraction of the cost of wheat, corn, soybean, or even “meat meal” which is largely feet, tails, nostrils, etc.

Chicken feathers are mechanically collected on the slaughter line so the cost is factored into the top price of chicken. We checked, in 2018 chicken breast averages $3.18 a pound. The logical deduction is that chicken feathers are a bothersome waste product that actually costs processing companies until some pet-hating person (obviously) looking for a leg-up envisioned a use for feathers!

It’s called productive imagination. That is what makes manufacturing possible. TheDogPress.com calls it “what’s wrong with human and canine health today.”

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