"What is in a name?" Romeo Montague asked, "A rose by any other name would still smell sweet." However, if they were called stench blossoms people would think of them differently, as Bart Simpson noted. The same can be said for upcycled pet food ingredients compared to by-products. The difference between pet foods made from by-products versus upcycled ingredients largely comes down to semantics. In a 2021 paper in the journal Foods, scientists proposed defining upcycled ingredients as environmentally friendly foods containing safe ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, including damaged food produce, by-products and scraps from food preparation.
“By-products are what’s left over after the intended products are made — regardless of whether it’s in a food and beverage supply chain or a pet food supply chain,” Angie Crone, CEO of the Upcycled Food Association said in an email to Petfood Industry. “It’s these by-products that contribute to millions of pounds of food waste each year. Upcycling involves converting these food by-products into a new ingredient or edible food product through value-added processing, essentially allowing our food system to get more out of less. For example, instead of just one product from a manufacturing process, you can now get two!”
