For some reason dogs don’t get mad cow disease. That’s all I know from following the disease during the brouhaha in the UK.
No. Horse meat is too expensive.
The humaneiacs have closed down all USA horse slaughter plants (resulting in a great increase of horses being left to starve by financially broke owners). So horses have to be transported to either Canada or Mexico for slaughter, most of that meat is exported to other countries where it’s sold for human consumption.
Also, many horses in the USA are euthanized by Vets using drugs; those carcasses aren’t usable in pet food because the euthanasia drugs remain in the meat.
It’s much cheaper for pet food makers to use the very lowest level of meat/meat by-products from cows, pigs, etc. – there is much more of that available in the marketplace, so it’s cheap.
Dog food is designed to keep a large mammal alive. Its kind of gross but you would not die eating it.
The iris is the best part, I always say.
When they’re smiling.
With Letterman retiring recently this reminds me of an early and one of my favorite jokes of his. Back in the 70s and 80s the brand Mighty Dog used to advertise that their dog food was 100% meat with, “Not a spec of cereal!” To which Dave would reply,* “Ya know, I don’t know about you, but my dog spends his time eating out of the garbage and drinkin’ out of the toilet. I don’t think he’s going to mind a ‘spec’ of cereal…”* 
Must have forgotten to ask this back in 2011, but what’s wrong with bone meal? I chew on chicken bones all the time and dig the bone marrow out of soup bones whenever I can.
Well you know how you can get a whole chicken or whole fish in the Asian markets with the head and everything? When we cook chicken or fish, the head’s usually there. I dig the eyeballs out first and eat them. Chicken eyeballs are mostly soft and edible. With some fish, especially the ones with the giant eyes, there’s a round, hard thing in the middle that I chew on but don’t end up eating. I don’t know what it is. If I get my hands on other eyeballs, I usually eat them first, just for the novelty. They are too small to provide any meaningful taste and they are mostly gelatinous with a hint of flavor of whatever animal it came from
I’ve heard that euthanized pets from “kill day” at animal shelters are also often sold to be processed into pet foods, but I don’t know if that’s true. If you think about the sheer numbers on a monthly basis, those corpses have to be disposed of on a large scale somehow. I’m not sure if it’s possible to incinerate them all.
Another interesting thing is the question of “4D” meat. All of the high quality pet food advocates claim that pet foods are made from meat that has the USDA grade “4D”. It stands for “dead, diseased, dying or disabled”. Peeking around on the USDA website, the lowest grade I can find is canner/cutter/utility which is not sold for human consumption. So it’s hard to tell if they really do use the stuff not fit for human consumption and feed it to our pets. But if they do… pretty sure I wouldn’t want to eat puppy chow any time soon.
I don’t know about shelters, and my anecdotal data is about ten years out of date, but my father the veterinarian had a service that picked up the dead dogs and cats and made them into fertilizer.
And my sister went to school with a guy who ran such a service (not the same one). He also picked up road kill, like deer who had been hit by cars and were not therefore fit for human consumption. He was quite a wealthy man - there is always a demand for people who deal with disgusting mess.
Regards,
Shodan
Bone meal is good for you. It contains calcium. Some calcium supplements are made from bone meal.
> Bone meal is good for you. It contains calcium. Some calcium supplements are made from bone meal. <
Too much calcium may not be good for you, if you are prone to kidney stones for example. Though I doubt many people ever eat enough dog/cat food for it to be a problem.
If eating dog food wasn’t healthy for humans, some lawyer would have sued the pants off someone and every can would have warning labels on them by now.
Eat too much and you risk a corneary.