[jgbond]

Having worked in a meat processing plant, I can assure you that no humans would want to eat anything that goes into "rendering" for use in pet food.

I'm not talking about offal, tripe, small goods, etc., all of which have markets for human consumption. Some of those items are high margin, too.

There are markets somewhere in the world for just about every last bit of an animal. The only stuff that goes into pet food is stuff that has been contaminated or that has no higher margin use in other applications. Basically, pets get the waste.

Fun fact -- The highest margin product in a beef house is fetal calf blood. It typically goes for about $400/liter and can sometimes spike up to $1000/liter.

[interfixus]

No doubt. But there are huge qualitative differences between good and bad animal food, by and large reflected in the price, but higher price being negatable by buying in bulk.

Everything sold in supermarkets - at least where I live - is junk with a clear and immediate negative impact on health and wellbeing. Why anyone would feed that stuff to anybody is beyond my comprehension.

[retox]

Interesting fact, thank you. I didn't know anything about the use of animal blood in medicine. Good to know we can find uses for most things to reduce waste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_bovine_serum

[flour_power]

it's not about reducing waste it's about reclaiming every possible revenue stream but the net effect is the same so...

[monort]

I've read an anecdote about McDonalds in the Soviet Union. They were selling meat scraps to dog owners, but they did it covertly, because of concern that poor people would buy it for consumption (meat was in deficit at the time).

What you consider as waste, someone would gladly eat. I realize transportation is a problem, these people live mostly in developing countries.

[vlehto]

Many humans do not want to eat the cheap meat I eat.

If you are saying that the responsibility of killed cow should be distributed by costs and not by kilos of meat, I'm probably as virtuous as vegan with three dogs.