By-products may include decayed meat or even the remains of companion pet animals. The first item should always be a meat or meat meal followed by another of similar quality or a vegetable or grain product. When the label starts with meat by-products, you could be feeding your animal any or all of the following: “the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat derived from slaughtered mammals, including, but not limited to: lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially de-fatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents.” Poultry by-product meal consists of: “ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices.” WHAT IS “MEAL”? Note that “Meat and bone meal” can LEGALLY include dead pets/animals (from road kill or vet’s offices) that have been ground up in rendering factories. If they were wearing chemical flea collars or had been treated with antibiotics or steroids before they died, those get ground up with them. So does the plastic bag around their bodies. Commercially manufactured foods are usually highly contaminated with bacteria. Animals that have died from all sorts of disease, trauma, or natural causes often are a source for “Meat Meal” It is commonly known that 25-50% of meat meals are contaminated by Salmonella bacteria.