Hello,
I read the artical
Are horses really made in to glue?
and was wondering, Do horses get put in those cans of dog food? I noticed that when my dog gets that food, he finds something that crunches in it sometimes. What else do they put in there? Personaly, I think that stuff is not fit for consumption by anything.
What is the straight dope?
nauseously fascinated
You might think differently about its fitness for consumption if you were really really hungry. Most of us Americans tend to be pretty picky about where food comes from. But dogs (and starving people) tend to be more concerned with nutrition than whether the source animal has cute Disney representations.
Look at the ingredient list for crunchies. Sometimes you’ll get nuggets of corn meal that clumped up. Perhaps there are some bone fragments.
Heck, horsemeat is regarded as perfectly normal food for humans in, e.g., France.
My brother used to work in a mill that supplied the ingredients for several dogfood companies. They ground up and dried out the scraps left over from a meat packing plant. The meal of each type was stored in large bins for later mixing.
How the ingredients were mixed depended upon the order. Usually for cost, protein and/or nutritional values (all gov. regulated BTW)
Y’all ready…there were bins full of ground up…bones, hooves/horns & chicken feathers (filler), horse meat, beef, …anything and everything that was not packed for public consumption went into the dogfood meal.
They did have some meal shipped in for mixing (ie: soy). Often they would get animals that were dying of disease or injuries and weren’t suitable for human consumption…rarely did that prevent them from giving it to the dogs.
and my GOD…did it ever smell, whenever I smell a fastfood hamburger it reminds me of that nasty place. I can’t eat at Jack’s or Mac’s…no way. I don’t eat fastfood anyway, but for sure now.
AND My brother quit working there a long time ago BUT the plant is still operating and I highly doubt anything has changed. :eek:
and trek I do imagine that crunch you were talking about was some bone that didn’t get ground fine enough.
That’s assuming you classify the horse-eaters of France as human. 
According to Pope Gregory III, in 732, the eating of horseflesh “is certainly an impure act and also accursed.”
And it’s non-Kosher meat to observant Jews, also.
I don’t know what Moslem leaders say about eating horsemeat – does anyone know?
I did a placement during my chem tech course for a plant that made dog food. It is amazing the stuff they put in there. (And yes, you can end up feeding your dogs and cats other dogs and cats). Horse, yes. And these guys are trying to keep the costs low, one day they got in barrels of cow tongues. I am sure dogs don’t mind cow tongues, but the smell was apperently pretty bad (I wasn’t there for that one).
Horses regularly get slaughtered around the world,but unlike the US where it winds up in petfood (or chinese restaurants) ,foreign markets also use it for human consumption.
Most of the horsemeat for humans I read is from a somewhat particular source,thoroughbreds not being in that category.
So what became of ** Exceller? **, (multiple Gr1 winner in Socal late 78 thru 79,and JCGP winner over 2 TC champions,**Seattle Slew ** and ** Affirmed ** ),or ** Ferdinand ** the '86 KY.derby winner,after they were slaughtered for food (Sweden and Japan,respectively) is unknown,but whoever’s plate they wound up in, it could certainly be claimed the Breakfast of Champions.
A sad fact of life for some of them.
BTW The prime cuts of horsemeat were being sold to markets abroad. IIRC one particular Japanese company was purchasing all the horse the plant could deliver at unbelievable high prices.
For a time people were bringing horses in by the trailer load to take advantage of the “kill” prices at the plant.
For example…any common nag could bring an average $350/ea. at the meat packing plant. These same horses could be purchased at a livestock auction for an average of less than $200/ea.
A person with a truck and trailer and a little money to start out could make a hefty profit quick obviously, many did. IIRC USDA shut this operation down after several years. Now the meat is processed offshore on a ship. The animals are killed and quartered and delivered to be processed in route to overseas markets.
Only scraps go into the dogfood section of the place now.
Well, there are rules about diseased animals. If the plant was breaking the law, they should be reported.
As for the unappitizing aspect of all the “meat and meat by-products”, I used to work in a restaurant. Not a five-star, but also not a pit. And believe me, I never ate at that restaurant once I saw what went on in the kitchen. We’re used to the tender-loving-care that June Cleaver paid to her meals, and it makes us queasy to know what goes on behind the closed doors of most food processing plants, human or pet.
Fortunately, human and animal digestive systems don’t particularly care whether something came from a gross part of a cute Disney character. So long as it doesn’t have too many of the wrong kind of microbes, it don’t make no difference.
Why would we rather eat ground-up wheat bran than ground-up chicken feathers? I dunno. I think it’s silly, but I’m as bad as the next guy about not wanting to know what all went into that chicken sandwich I just wolfed down.
sford You’re from Chicago, you should know something about the meat packing industry then.
Of course they get reported and are regularly inspected, yadda yadda, okay. They also aren’t supposed to hire illegal aliens (big f**ing joke) the fines, bribes and whatever else is involved is scarcely a drop in the bucket compared to the profits.
The owner was a multimillionaire 30 years ago…today who knows. This one plant alone has several hundred employees, at least 1/3 of which are illegal aliens. When the light green dodges pull into the plant (Texas immigration) it is like watching a bad movie, dozens upon dozens of workers running out the back of the plant into the woods not far behind it.
They’ll load up a bus full and take 'em back to Mexico. They’ll all be back in a week. Everyone knows this, it’s no secret and complaints have been made many times.
I suppose in recent years he’s probably cleaned up the place (I really don’t know for sure) My brother quit there a few years back and I don’t live in Palestine,Tx. anymore.
Why eat wheat grain rather than feathers? You ever tasted a feather? Then there’s the nutritional aspect I suppose. Try making a loaf of bread from feathers some time and tell me how it is… 
Now that I think about it…seems I recall the place was purchased recently by a Japanese company. The old man died and his son sold out. So maybe it is better now. I’m gonna have to check this out ASAP. I’ll try to get back to ya later~