Chicken Meal

On a dog forum I ran across, someone e-mailed the Diamond Company regarding what the chicken meal in Chicken Soup for Dogs contains. They said their meal was rendered chicken backs and necks. Now, I thought according to the AAFCO, chicken meal was supposed to be made from the "meat" part of the chicken with maybe a little bone in it. Chicken backs and necks sounds like mostly bone with very little meat. Maybe that's why their food is so cheap? My cats eat Nutro and not Chicken Soup but I'm just curious about this since so many think this food is so great. Does anyone know anything more about this?

This is something I have come across on this site as well as other places..I would also like to know people's opinions:

"In premium cat food, what is the difference between the ingredient listing Meat and the ingredient listing Meal?

The principle component of chicken meat is water. By weight, a chicken is 70-75% water. So actually, when you see "chicken" or "lamb" on the top of an ingredient list in pet food, it means the water weight in the raw (wet) meat is what qualified it to be first. Ingredients are listed in descending order of weight, with the heaviest first, under standards set by the Center for Veterinary Medicine for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

After the cooking process, where up to 75% of the chicken evaporates, the actual chicken content is reduced to being the 4th or 5th ingredient in your dog's food. So for every five pounds of raw (wet) meat used in some brands of dog food, as little as one pound may end up in the finished product. This occurs because 75% of a raw (wet) chicken is water, which evaporates during the cooking process.

On the other hand, meal is fresh meat, with the water and fat already removed. It takes 5 pounds of fresh chicken meat to make 1 pound of meal. So when you see chicken meal or lamb meal listed as the first ingredient on a dog food label, the chicken or lamb is really in the bag where it counts as a superior food source
"

The bones are also good nutrition for cats. They eat the bones of the prey they catch.

"Chicken Meal" ~It's all fancy wording to make it look better then what it is. It is what people cannot eat. It is the carcass. A carcass is basically the bones stripped with a little bit of meat on them. The carcass his highly cooked. When cats in the wild eat bones they eat the whole animal not just a stripped carcass. And in the wild it is certainly not cooked at high tempatures to a concentrated form.
BTW all animals desiganted as "pet food" can and most likely are the 3 "D's" dead, dying and diseased.
Maybe this post will be removed too because the truth hurts.

Originally Posted by bengalbabe

"Chicken Meal" ~It's all fancy wording to make it look better then what it is. It is what people cannot eat. It is the carcass. A carcass is basically the bones stripped with a little bit of meat on them. The carcass his highly cooked. When cats in the wild eat bones they eat the whole animal not just a stripped carcass. And in the wild it is certainly not cooked at high tempatures to a concentrated form.
BTW all animals desiganted as "pet food" can and most likely are the 3 "D's" dead, dying and diseased.
Maybe this post will be removed too because the truth hurts.

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i know some copanys use "pet grade" but many are using human.. though what I know of what is allowed for humans I should be a veggie :0... I wouldnt remove this but