Academy’s Definition: The meat and bone derived from mammalian tissue. This ingredient does not contain hard-to-digest ingredients such as hooves, hair, or the contents of the stomach or intestine.

How It’s Used In Dog Food: Meat and Bone Meal is used, exclusively, as a cost-effective protein and fat source. In the realm of meat manufacturing, every tissue is incredibly important. The bits of meat that are not fully captured during the rendering process – think of all the tissues that accumulate on equipment, machines, and are left over from knife and saw intolerances – are rolled into this ingredient called “meat and bone meal”.

It’s is considered the waste product of the meat industry (I.E. the pieces of meat that have been processed in such a way that they cannot be sold as a full product and, instead, must be combined into a one-size-fits-all ingredient definition). To clarify, these are not waste products such as feces, urine, or other harmful excretions or pathogens. Those products do exist, but are not for consumption, instead they are used for soil-enrichment such as fertilizers, nitrogen additives, and mineral additives.

Because of this one-size-fits-all ingredient definition, consumers lack any traceability with this ingredient. There is no simple way to determine what species is contained in meat and bone meal, it could be a mixture of any mammalian meat housed in a single meat operation. For example, if a meat producer handles beef and lamb, it may contain only beef and lamb. However, chicken meat producers may only deal with chicken. Unfortunately, consumers give up traceability when they dive this deep into cost-effective measures.

The Reality of Meat And Bone Meal: the meat industry is highly regulated and, in general, produces safe and clean meats for us all to consume. While the thought of “waste product” may be off-putting, meat and bone meal is safe to include in pet foods.

At the Academy, we encourage consumers to educate themselves about their diets, and we recommend foods that have a high degree of specificity (I.E. you know exactly where it comes from, who made it, and the philosophy behind why they made it). Meat and bone meal is a highly controversial ingredient because of it’s lack of traceability, but it is also important to remember that meat and bone meal is being consumed by a large number of animals without any harm or adverse affects.

We encourage owners to be advocates for their pets, and advocates for more transparency. However, we see that many owners rally against this ingredient touting that it is “unsafe” or “unethical”, which is simply misguided. There are many safety procedures in place to make sure that meat is clean and safe. And, think of the counter argument: is it ethical to let precious meat product (which was once a living being) go to waste because our processes cannot capture 100% of the product?

Owners should be fighting for traceability and specificity, so that the industry may provide this capture-all ingredient and we know exactly what’s in it. If that were the case, we could make an informed decision. Food for thought!