Chicken Meal?

What is chicken meal?

Chicken meal is whole chicken with all of the moisture removed.
Basically, you get more chicken this way in terms of cat food.

What about chicken by product?

By product is organs, brains, beaks and feet, sometimes feathers as well.

I am assuming that is a filler???

Chicken by product is a filler, chicken meal is the best source of protien. The better pet food companies don't use chicken by products, or any other by products, meat by products being the worst.

Amber

Originally Posted by emb_78

What is chicken meal?

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I like the description found here as it makes the point that the quality of the protein(chicken meal) will depend on "the amount of chicken meat, bone and connective tissue" that is processed together. The per centage of actual chicken meat may vary brand to brand, and therefore I agree with the author - chicken is still my preference versus chicken meal. If chicken meal were consistently just the meat dehyrated and ground, I would feel differently.

Originally Posted by emb_78

I am assuming that is a filler???

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by-products are just a poor source of anything in my opinion. If one were truly talking a mouse and all it's parts, there are indeed benefits to your cat from all those parts, but by-products are not fresh, juicy organs, they are defined by AAFCO as: "ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice.†I could see a bit of benefit from ground bone, any meat left on the neck, but not from feet, the occasional feather.

Thanks for the help!