Meat Meal

Meat meal is essentially ground meat (including offal, connective tissues and in some cases bones etc) which has been heated at high pressure until virtually all moisture has evaporated. The result is a fine, dry powder which is used in the vast majority of dry dog foods in the UK. It is usually listed with the animal source - i.e. 'chicken meal', 'lamb meal' etc. or occasionally 'chicken meat meal'. Because meat meal is only around 8% water, it is far more nutritionally concentrated than fresh meat which contains roughly 70% water. For this reason far less meat meal is needed - for example, 20% fresh meat would only equate to around 6.5% meat meal. This is an important consideration when comparing the meat contents of dry dog foods. If the source animal is not specified, the general term 'meat meal' can come from any animal. Broad terms like this are often used by dog food manufacturers instead of naming each ingredient either because the recipe regularly changes or because naming the ingredients would put customers off.