I am talking about Ol’Roy Hearty Cuts in gravy which sell for about forty five cents per can. Only the “Mixed Grill” and “With Beef & Liver” flavors do not list meat by products on the back label. Indeed, almost every other brand including Alpo, Kibbles&Bits ect have “meat by products” listed in addition to chicken or beef. I assume that “meat by products” means things like rendered horse, road kill, and even possibly euthanized animals from shelters. The reason that I care (other than the fact that it is especially disgusting) is that I believe there might be a slightly lower risk of “prion” contamination from products that do not contain meat by products (not that it’s been proven that any food supply in the United States whether for animals or human consumption is tainted with prions, its just I hate to miss an opportunity to worry). In addition, prions such as those associated with vCJD, Scrapie, Kuru, CWD ect. are **very ** difficult to remove from a contaminated surface (indeed most if not all of the proven sporadic CJD cases in the United States that were transmitted between people occured secondary to operations such as corneal transplants or neurosurgery with infected instruments likely being the route of transmission). Thus, if I use a “fork” to scrape “meat by product” dog food out of a can and that meat happens to be “prion tainted” it is far from certain that my dish washer would remove the contamination.
In any case I called the hotline listed on the back of the can 800-342-2114 and the person I spoke with had no idea that this was even an issue (in other words she wasn’t even aware that these two flavors didn’t have meat by products listed). This made me wonder if this might not be an error of omission on the label. On the other hand this has been an issue that I’ve noticed for almost three years now. In addition, it seems like these two flavors almost always sell out first on the shelves leading me to believe that I’m not the only person making a buying decision based on this observation.
There are links on the side to several other pages in this pet food series, including how pet food is manufactered.
In case the shockwave graphic dosen’t work for you, this is from How to Read a Pet Food Label II:
“Joe’s Beef for Dogs”: Beef must comprise at least 70% of the total product
“Joe’s Beef Dinner for Dogs”: Beef must comprise at least 25% of the total product
“Joe’s Dog Formula with Beef”: Beef must comprise at least 3% of the total product
“Joe’s Dog Formula Beef Flavor”: There can be less than 3% beef in the total product; manufacturer must show that animals can distinguish it as beef flavor
I’ve never heard of “prion” contamination, can’t help you there. But honestly, Ol’ Roy is probably the worst dog food on the market, your dog could get better nutrition eating from a Dumpster. Alpo and Kibbles&Bits aren’t any better. Please don’t feed those, at least get something like Purina if you can’t afford the premium brands.
Those two types probably sell out fastest because they’re cheapest. Some dogs eat a LOT. I always thought by-products meant various parts of critters that we don’t want to know about; it’s not like a dog would care about cow anus, even if we would.
What’s the big deal? If a pack of wild dogs take down a big animal, they’ll eat all the ‘by-product’ stuff on their own. Rover likes it too.
The prion problem is valid, but it’s valid for the cattle industry, not the dog food industry. If the USDA/ranchers/farmers/etc. got their act straight, one wouldn’t need to worry about the dog food.
There is a vast variety of dog food brands that you won’t ever see at Walmart or major supermarkets. Even chains like Petco only carry a small selection of what is available.
The OP is located in the midwest, so it might be a little more difficult, but there are dog breeders and independent distrubitors everywhere, check the web or some local kennels/breeders to ask about what your needs are. Dog food ships bulk also, so you can even get it shipped to you for pretty cheap.
Almost without exception, if you can conceive of a dog food, someone out there makes it. You can find organic, gluten-free, kosher-certified, vegan kibble should you desire. Dog have a craving for avocado? You can find that, too.
Example, we have a dalmation with several food allergies, and can’t use anything with rice. Our second dog is simply a very finicky eater and will starve itself rather than eat something it doesn’t enjoy. It took a very long time to find a dog food that was veggie/rice-free/tasty.
Beg to differ. There are worse foods available, but you have to really search to find them. Ol’ Roy is crap (IMHO) but it is readilly available crap. You can get bulk dog food from feed stores and it is a small step down from Ol’ Roy.
a. You may be missing my point. Old Roy has about eight different flavors all priced exactly the same. However, the two “flavors” that I referenced are the only ones that do not list meat- by products on the label.
b. We do use Purina High Performance as the “nugget”. We use Old Roy as the “flavor” (along with table scraps). When you have five dogs that consume about fifty pounds of nugget each week (alone), and you are a college student, price is an issue (I agree we shouldn’t have so many dogs, but that is another story altogether).
I can’t believe any of you are feeding that crap to your dogs!
Please please give your loved ones something better to eat than Ol’Roy.
Try some of these brands
Canidae
Eagle
Diamond
Solid Gold
Nutro
35 cents a can? I’m paying $1.29 per can for the stuff I add to Loki’s kibble for flavor. I can’t imagine what’s in a can that only costs 35 cents.
For the record, Loki, my Great Dane, eats Canidae kibble with a dollop of Eagle canned mixed in. No health problems, gorgeous shiny coat, totally worth the few extra bucks.
If all “flavors” but one listed ethoxyquin, why would that be meaningful?
IOW why does what you are reading on the label surprise you? The manufacturer of ‘Ol Roy brand dog food produces their product to be palatable and inexpensive. If “meat/meat by-products” is not on a varieties’ label, the that variety contains no meat/meat by-products. EOS.
Showdog.com is a game site where you can breed dogs and show them in an AKC-style dog show. One of the factors is the grade of food you feed your (simulated) dog, ranging from very cheap to very expensive with some doing special things like increase coat condition. Anyway, a dog on the really cheap stuff will start to deteriorate and even a prime dog will no longer be competitive after only a couple weeks on it. The food’s name? Old Boy. I literally laughed out loud when I came across it.
Of the $150.00 or so that we spend on ALL household goods each week about $25.00 of that is on dog food. If we adopted your advice and started feeding our dogs food that cost $1.25 per can our weekly dog food bill would probably be over $50.00. When we owned our own businesses we fed our dogs Science Diet kibble, and Iams meat. Now we are nursing students and they get Purina High Performance Kibble, and Old Roy (plus tables scraps that range from chicken and beans, to Sirloin steak and cheese). My dogs are not show dogs they are Mastiff, Rottweiller mixes or mutts. In addition, to a homeless boxer (that wandered onto our property barely alive) a beagle mutt that renters we evicted left behind, and an old dachshund my mom left when she died. Hardly, a week goes by where my wife doesn’t threaten to take my 44magnum or 9mm and shoot them all while I am gone at school or work (with the implied threat that I am next). She hates these dogs and blames them for our not being able to spend a night away from our house for at least the last eight years (she also blames them for her mortgage business failing in part since they would often “bark” while customers were calling our 800 number). They are fortunate to get the food that they do all things considered. Indeed, I often feel like an attorney representing a death row inmate always trying for another “stay” of execution. It’s not the life I would like to give them, but then again I’m not much better at being a husband or father.
The reason that this ingredient difference matters should be quite obvious:
a. NOT using meat by products is a characteristic usually reserved for “premium” dog food brands. Thus, one of two things is occuring with the flavors I mentioned. Either, the public is getting an awesome deal with these two varieties (making it by far the cheapest brand of dog food that doesn’t use meat by products) or Wall Mart is lying (or just making a mistake) and benefiting from a product attribute that doesn’t really exist (it would be like listing that a car you sold had a V-8, when it was really a V-4). I just want an explanation for what I consider to be an obvious and profound anomaly.
Have you inspected the labels as per richardb’s post above? Meat by-products do basically mean the stuff from the animal that the company can’t manage to get into a hot dog. Dogs, given their druthers, have no objection to meat by-products, it’s the filler components that make the difference between quality and OK food. And, finally, is it possible for you to make a post in GQ without half the content belonging in IMHO or MPSIMS?
I can’t find the thread where I said this before, but there’s nothing wrong with meat by-products. Organ meats and other uncommon cuts are popular with some humans, and if collected responsibly are perfectly safe and highly nutritious. Meat by-products are nothing different. I, personally, am a big pansy when it comes to liver and kidneys and such, but if my dog enjoys it, more power to him.
Feh. Sawdust doesn’t contain meat byproducts, either. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to feed it to your dog.
There’s a third possibility you’re missing here: the flavors in question contain byproducts, but in small enough amounts that they don’t have to be listed on the label. There’s just enough to give it some flavor. This is a marked contrast with quality feeds, which contain such a high percentage of real meat that they don’t need byproducts as an added source of protein. This is the option my money would be on.
As for the economics of feeding Ol’ Roy, it’s often not a significant difference in total food cost to give 'em the decent stuff. The higher-quality pet foods have fewer fillers in them, so they’re more nutrient dense and you wind up feeding a LOT less. The food might cost 3x as much, but it lasts 2-3x as long. It also greatly reduces the amount of shit you have to pick up from the yard.
Oh, and the prion contamination–if you really must get your panties in a bunch over something so ridiculously unlikely, get a plastic spoon that’s exclusively for the dog food.
Whether you think they or wonderful or not, dog food without “meat” by products generally command a much higher price than those without such by products. Thus, why only these two products (which are priced the same as all the other flavors that do have meat products) is salient. That’s because people would generally only expect brands such as IAMS, Eukanuba ect (super premium brands) to not have meat by-products. Also, either Wall Mart is making a marketing error or they are mistaken (or lying). That is because is these two flavors do not have meat by products (as their label indicates) then this is a strong selling point which should be promoted (since they are the same price). On the other hand if they really DO have meat by products then it should be listed just like it is on all of their other varieties (which are the same price).
It is my understanding that “meat by-products” doesn’t just mean beef or chicken by products. In other words it can include road kill, euthanized animals (such as other dogs) ect. IF this is the case then I think most people would agree that it is less desireable than one hundred percent beef or chicken (organ scraps or otherwise). Indeed, farmers are no longer permitted to feed “cows” other dead “cows” because of concerns that this could facilitate the spread of prion based diseases.
You still may be missing my point the two flavors in question do NOT list any meat by products for “fillers”. Let’s take the “Beef&Liver” for example. It lists Poultry, Beef, and Liver as it’s top three ingredients (and water sufficient for processing). Also, I use four cans a night split between all five of my dogs mixed in with their “kibble”. So switching from a brand that costs forty five cents to one which would cost $1.25 per night would equal $16.80 more per week if I stayed with the same kibble. That is as much as we pay for our phone or cable each month. Most of my dog’s nutrition comes from the kibble which as I said is Purina’s nutritional excellence formula (a midline formula). Also, as I indicated they get leftovers which varies each night depending upon what we eat.
Not only is there little or nothing wrong with “meat by-products”, but those are actually likely to be a dog’s favorite part of a carcass. The lungs and intestines which are too -er- “packed with flavor” for our civilized tastes, are the first parts wild dogs and canids fight over and eat, afer a kill.
I can understand why a human might question the widsom of consuming liver, whose functions include binding [conjugating] or detoxifying toxins absorbed from the diet [all blood from the stomach and upper intestines actually passes directly to the liver (portal circulation) for treatment before it is allowed ro pass to the rest of the body]. Similarly the intestines often contain -er- ‘wastes’ and the kidneys… well, you got it.
Yet even we dainty types in the West often eat liver [as liver, foie gras, leberkase, liverwirst, etc.) and intestines (haggis, sausage casings), while avoiding the lungs, whose immense surface/mass ratio makes them merely -er- "highly aromatic to “civilized” tastes.
Tests by pet food companies in post-WWII boom America showed that dogs loved certain by-products, but owners didn’t. The the 60s/70s there was an explosion of products that barely catered to dog tastes, but shamelessly pandered to human tastes. Sales soared. Dogs don’t buy food; people too. You’ll still find many popular brands of wet food on the shelves that look like (and cost as much as) human dishes such as beef stew. (Recipe brand is a classic example.
I believe this resemblance to human dishes was partly what spawned all those ULs about the poor or elderly eating dog food to stay alive (though it isn’t actually a cheaper alternative to ordinary human food). It may be a coincidence that I have never seen an urban legend website cite a pre-1950 reference to this UL.
I will confess that my sources of this information includes “Subliminal Seduction” and other advertising exposes and pop-anthropology book of that era. I teally ought to check them, because any of the “facts” of their primary theses have been called into question