Chicken By-Product Meal

Chicken By-Product Meal appears on the labels of 21 of the 244 recipes we have read and scored (9 percent of the database), in label forms including Chicken By-product Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (source of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate), poultry by-product meal, Poultry By-product Meal (Source Of Glucosamine), Poultry By-Product Meal and 2 more label forms.

What it is

The rendered remainder of the chicken once the cuts sold for people are taken: necks, feet, organs and other defined parts, dried and ground.

Why makers use it

It is nutritious and cheap, and it uses parts of the bird that would otherwise be wasted.

What to watch for

Legal and defined, but the mix varies more between batches than a named meal does. Our rubric scores it below a named meal for that inconsistency, not for safety.

Highest scoring recipes that carry it

The full database, filterable by brand, format, life stage and grains, is the reviews index; the food finder answers it by the proteins a dog must avoid.

Often on the same panels

Choline Chloride, Vitamin Supplements (the Vitamin Pack), Natural Flavor, Selenium Yeast and Sodium Selenite. The full dictionary is the ingredient index.