Proteins: Page 2

Chicken meal: Is there anything new with this ingredient’s use in pet food?

A staple in pet food chicken meal has undergone modest changes to its definition and composition in the past 15 years, but challenges remain.

With an unclear definition and certain quality concerns, chicken meal in pet food has several issues that seem here to stay. | Lars Christnsen, Dreamstime.com

Brand Insights

Pet Food Quality: A More Holistic Approach to Food Safety

KEMIN NUTRISURANCE

Learn why addressing microbial risks throughout the value chain is critical to a robust food safety program. Brand Insights from Kemin.

Pet Food Quality: A More Holistic Approach to Food Safety

Fibers and Legumes

Soybean meal: A quality ingredient with a lot of critics

Despite claims to the contrary, soybean meal remains a consistent, quality, sustainable and nutritious part of value-minded pet foods.

Soybean meal has plenty of value in pet food; however, it is currently suffering from a bit of an image crisis. | Sharaf Maksumov, Dreamstime.com

Fish meal: Supply, preservation biggest challenges for dog and cat diets

Fish meal remains a high-quality source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, but supply and preservation challenges may force pet food to be more pragmatic in their choices.

Fish meal has significant protein value as a pet food ingredient, but current sustainability and preservation issues make it a more complicated topic than it used to be. | Thor Jorgen Udvang, Dreamstime.com

Duck in dog, cat food: The other red meat?

Duck appears to be here to stay as an alternative meat/protein source in pet foods.

It is important to note that duck is not a 100% white fiber meat like chicken. Rather, it has higher red muscle fiber in the breast and should be considered a red meat, according to research. | AndreySt, Bigstock.com

Meat and novel proteins in pet food

Meat in pet food is here to stay. Here’s what needs to be addressed to meet growing demand.

Freeze-dried meat and pet food

There are a couple of approaches in which freeze-dried meats are included in pet foods.

Casein: Does it have a use in pet food?

In pet food, casein shows up in some prescription and specialty diets but we don’t often find it in over-the-counter diets. So why hasn’t it found popularity in pet food?

Pet Food Casein

Poultry by-product meal and poultry meal: Is there a difference?

The availability of fresh poultry and rendered poultry products coincided with the commercialization and industrialization of poultry production in the 1940s and 1950s; and feed values for poultry by-product meal (PBPM) were first established in the 1950s (Fuller, 1996). The volume of rendered poultry proteins in 2003 was estimated at 3,073.5 million pounds per year and the companion animal industry consumes about 23% (Pearl 2003).

Organ meats: quality source of protein for pets

Organ meats have been called a multitude of names like viscera, entrails, tripe, paunch, offal and giblets. Despite the 18th-century monikers, they are the working internal organs, the guts, of the pig, chicken, cow, sheep or fish from which they derive.

Pea proteins: Alternative protein source for petfoods?

The hunt continues for alternative ingredients to fuel the ever-increasing demand for new and different products to entice the discerning pet owner. Whether to fill the void after we dodge the negative perceptions of corn, soy, wheat, beef and by-products or as a matter of satisfying the burgeoning array of “limited ingredient” and “no grain” diet choices, finding the perfect new and different ingredient is always a challenge—especially when dietary protein levels are edging upward, perceived overages in minerals have been tightened and the availability of process functionality has declined.

Salmon: nutrient-rich petfood ingredient

Salmon, the supposed “last wild food” (Greenberg, 2010), has become very popular in petfoods. This may simply be marketing; however, there is some nutritional credence to the hype.

Protein from potatoes?

The terms potato and protein don't often come up in the same sentence--probably because we think of potatoes solely as a starch source. But in our ever-expanding search for useful ingredients in the petfood industry, potato protein, a concentrated extract from the potato tuber, has turned up in several specialty petfoods in the last couple of years.

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