Last month’s Petfood Industry magazine featured beef in the Ingredient Issues column by Dr. Greg Aldrich, pet food program coordinator at Kansas State University. While beef is what’s for dinner in many pet’s diets, at least as a principal ingredient, various other cattle components appear in pet food. Learn more about those ingredients:
1. Beef: A popular, complicated ingredient in dog and cat diets
Beef has been a principal ingredient in dog and cat diets for decades. Although it lost a bit of popularity a few years ago as chicken took over the top spot in most pet foods, beef-based ingredients are still considered a preferred choice by many pet owners.
2. Cheese: A fun food ingredient for pets and their owners
Cheese is found in several pet foods and treats; maybe not as the main ingredient, but certainly as a flavor or complementary feature to entice pets and their owners. Cheese promotes fun and diversity to their otherwise pedestrian flavor choices.
3. Freeze-dried meat and pet food
Dehydrated meat-containing foods have become popular in the pet food aisle in the last few years. They seem to be positioned counter-opposite to conventional extruded pet foods and as an alternative to raw foods for the nutrition-conscious or very high-involvement pet owners.
4. 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.
5. Whey your protein options
It is becoming increasingly common to find pet foods that contain whey, a milk protein, as a prominent ingredient on their labels.
