Ingredient Encyclopedia

Byproducts: The "Mostly" Marketing Trick

When a company tells you their food contains "mostly good byproducts," that single word — mostly — is doing enormous marketing work. It sounds reassuring, but it confirms nothing. Is it 90/10? 51/49? 10/90? You don't know. They don't have to tell you. And by law, they don't.

Under AAFCO and CFIA definitions, "meat byproducts" and "animal byproducts" can legally include a wide range of leftover slaughterhouse material: lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, blood, bone, partially defatted fatty tissue, stomachs, and intestines. Some of these (like liver or heart) are genuinely nutritious. Others are cheap filler with little biological value for your dog. "Byproduct meal" can even include material rendered from sources most owners would never knowingly feed.

The word "mostly" is the giveaway. It means not all. It means some portion is not good. And because there's no legal definition of what "good" even means in that sentence, the company controls both the numerator and the denominator. It's marketing designed to sound transparent while hiding the ratio.

If a brand won't name the exact organ, cut, and species on the label — assume the worst is in the bag. Real transparency reads: "chicken liver, chicken heart, beef kidney." Not "meat byproducts, mostly good."