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June 6, 2008

Sometimes You Don't Want To Know

Sometimes you don't want to know, but in this job we're finding out a lot.
We loaded this morning at a mill in eastern Missouri. Just seemed like an ordinary grain mill. We were loading "cereal finds" which as it turns out is.....
well they had large tubs (really pallets with sides) filled with various kinds of cereal....things like frosted flakes, captian crunch, corn puffs, and even cocoa puffs, or at least these cereals looked like those type things. No name brands were available. I'm assuming it was either the flakes that didn't size up, left overs from cleaning the machines, OR out of date cereal returned from the stores.
ANYWAY.....they were taking this stuff and throwing it together and grinding into a meal which they loaded on us.
We are taking it to Hamlin, TX to a pet food mill. Yes, thats right. Little doggies get frosted flakes in their morning meal too! I just hope they don't really include the stuff that looks like cocoa puffs.

We delivered here before, the Texas place, and we brought in lamb meal that time from CA. We've hauled lamb meal, chicken meal, and "meat and bone meal" which is beef that we picked up at a kill plant in CA. (mostly dairy cows...guess ole Bossy went dry)
The chicken meal went to Purina in Flagstaf, AZ so you know what it was going into....pet food again. And when we picked it up they were bringing in truck loads of the stuff they make it with, which consisted of (very smelly loads of ) left over chicken parts from processing chickens, including the feathers!!!
The "meat and bone meal" in CA went to Foster Farms. I'm assuming that went into chicken feed.
And you know, I'm ok with dogs and cats getting the chicken and lamb in their food, its nutritous. However, I always prefered to think it was choice little cuts of meat like I get. Not feathers and bone and innards all ground up and dryed.
I know of people who make their dogs food from scratch, even have the recipe stored somewhere. But I always thought...."what a lot of time, not to mention money!"
I think now, I'd be temted to fix my girls their food from scratch.

2 comments:

Meagan said...

Yikes! Who knew? That's just kind of gross... they could at least take the feathers out!

Valerie said...

I knew about the chicken parts - really gross. Didn't know about the cereal, though. When we had that messed up dog food from China last year I actually thought about making Tuffy's food. Ugh.