[dane&cockermom]

what is "chicken meal" or "ocean fish meal" is it like a by product? is it something to avoid? what exactly is it?

[Dakota Spirit]

Meal is good! I believe it's like the processed form of the actual meat whereas by-products are all the left over parts, you know? Meal is what you are looking for in foods.

[cascabel]

Chicken meal is simply chicken with the water removed, not a byproduct

What you would want to avoid is something like 'animal meal' or 'poultry meal' or anything with the word byproduct following it.

Meal itself is good though and I prefer to see it rather than just regular 'chicken' (or other named meat) in kibble because its standing within the ingredients is more reflective of the amount present.

Ocean fish meal....I'm not as happy with this one. I want to see a named fish. Additionally I think many unnamed fish meals tend to contain ethoxyquin, which is a no-no. You should contact the comany for more details on something like this.

[Shanette Peters]

One of the first job's I had at a pet store, we had a pet supply distributor bring in a rep from the manufactures of the foods we sold. We were told that when reading dog or cat food if it say's 'by-product meal' that is the stuff we wouldn't even eat (like say chicken by product meal would be the feet/beak/feathers/or organs with no nutritional value like the bowels etc. *may I say YUK!), if it says chicken meal - as cascabel said it is simply the chicken (meat) with water removed, if it says simply chicken you know it'll have more nutritional value to it. On the same topic, you might want to also look at corn and wheat and fat in the same sence. From what I was told 'corn gluten meal' Not good, corn meal - better, corn even better. I was also told that some manufactures(not sure which ones) when they don't specify what meat they use, it is also cause they will use what ever is cheapest to produce at the time. Another thing is those that are 'cheaply made' have in the past (not sure if they still do) used 'horse hair' in place of the ingredient used for protien. If you want a futher explanation on what goes into the dog food you want to buy, consider contacting the company and requesting for detailed information to insure the best for your dog. I know there are other great brands of dog food out there, for my dog - I feed her 'Eagle Pack' - after I saw a man eat it like cereal at a pet expo and say ' if a person were lost they could servive off this food -even if it doesn't taste great for humans lol' Since I have used it with her I don't pick up nearly the amount of 'poop' I used to. Hope that helps.

[Ginny01OT]

I agree with Cascabel--if you are looking for a "fish" meal you would look for salmon meal or menhaden fish meal--corn whether corn meal or corn in a dog food is not good--I would steer clear of dog food with corn as an ingredient in any form.

[Max'sHuman]

The only other thing about fish, and this is bearing in mind that I feed my dog a salmon based food because he needs the oil in his coat (I'm still considering changing it again) is that if you have a breed that is prone to glaucoma I would not feed it. Really, almost any fish based food, and you might not care about this, is not environmentally friendly. But for the salmon, since we have overfished salmon so badly, will be farmed salmon. The salmon farms create a ton of polution, are fed on fish pellets which contributes to the overfishing of the clupeiod (including menhaden) fishes and often include the dye canaxathantin (sp?) which has been shown to cause glaucome and other health problems. As for the menhaden, they are just severely overfished, usually using methods that are environmentally unfriendly and if their populations continue to be depleted at this rate then they might not be around much longer. So, it's just stuff to be aware of. Unless you have a good reason to feed a fish based food, which I guess those of us that do do, I would try other protein sources first. ::sigh:: I really should switch his food I guess and just supplement with salmon oil.

[Ginny01OT]

I supplement with tripe (tripett) that has menhaden fish oil--seems to be working nicely