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Well I doubt that you would feed a dog roadkill, diseased dog, euthanized dog, and not just dogs to, it can be diseased camel!

People will put in anything cheap for some 'meat'.

The answer is By-Products in themselves are not the issue. In the By-Products there are an invaluable amount of nutrients. In a raw diet you are being told exactly what you are feeding your dog. In most commercial kibble, the by-products are not the organs. The animal is slaughtered and processed for a maximum profit...organs are sold off at a higher price, and what you are left with is poor quality remains, even tumors. By-Products in kibble are the worst of the garbage, from animals that die in transit, diseased, or are dying. They are also not usually consistent and are a poor form of nutrition. You don't know what you are getting. All food products from the animals themselves to the grains, are graded. Human consumable is the highest grade. The scale then goes down depending on how much contaminents are in the product. Contaminents can include toxins, feces, and molds, ect. the lower the grade (ie. the more contaminents) the cheaper the product. To produce a food that only costs $15 for 50 lbs I would bet the ranch that not are not using products that are just barely not suitable for the human market. They are using the bottom of the barrel. You can slaughter a cow and give your dog all the leftovers...the difference is those leftovers are from an animal that was safe for you to eat. A healthy (until it died), undiseased animal.

http://www.api4animals.org/facts.php?p=359&more=1

the above site is an amazing yet horrifying article on commercial pet food. it is not a radical article. it is factual and disgusting

I raw feed both of my dogs. I'm fairly new to raw feeding, but have been researching it for a while.

When you're talking about by-products in pet food, those are not feet, organs, etc. They are talking about hair (which Patient Paws mentioned), feathers (pressure-cooked with steam until forming a gel), and even blood-soaked sawdust from a meatpacking floor. Some commercial pet foods also contain the same ingredient found in clay kitty litter!

There is nothing wrong with a dog eating feet or organs, or even chicken backs and neckbones! My dogs happen to LOVE pigs feet. Organs are extremely rich in nutrients and are actually very good for your pets.

By-products with a raw diet are the stuff humans will still eat such as liver, feet, necks, etc. People eat those by-products.

The by-products in dog food are everything a human wont eat, including as Patient Paws said, hair.

http://www.api4animals.org/facts.php?p=359&more=1

I raw feed and there is a vast difference between raw offal and offcuts and the processed crap (and yes I mean that literally) in pet food.

"Dogs are Carnivores" An article clearly explaining the physiological reasons behind this classification

http://www.thewholedog.org/artcarnivores...

A feeding guide published by Tom Lonsdale, a vet who advocates raw feeding and has been widely published

http://www.rawmeatybones.com/diet/exp-di...

A website debunking some of the many myths regarding raw feeding and bones.

http://rawfed.com/myths

Nice question.

The difference is that the 'by products' in raw food aren't treated excessively with random chemicals, nor are they the sweepings from the floor of a butchers shop.

Purina and Alpo aren't bad strictly because of the by-products, they're bad because of the high content in corn, wheat, sugars, gluten and HAIR.

ADD> Yep, In a dog food study they boiled 12 pieces of each commercial dog food until everything boiled out, ran it through a fine grained strainer and found HAIR. Its basically from pushing bones, organs, eyes, etc on the floor that the animal was killed on. You get hair picked up with it.

It is a good question.

Animal by-products are animal carcases, parts of carcases or products of animal origin that are not intended for human consumption. This includes catering waste, used cooking oil, former foodstuffs, butcher and slaughterhouse waste, blood, feathers, wool, hides and skins, fallen stock, pet animals, zoo and circus animals, hunt trophies, manure, ova, embryos and semen.

I beleive that the difference is probably that the raw ingredients are not processed, are fresher and are hormone free, perhaps making it slightly healthier. The organs and necks etc...are fed along with other really healthy fresh meat, as opposed to corn and other fillers.

By products aren't feet and organ. Nothing wrong with eating a foot, believe it or not people around the world hold different animal feet as gourmet items. Organ meats are also rich in many vitamins and minerals that muscle meats don't contain and people all around the world eat them as well, Hagus, Liver, Beef Heart, Chicken Gizzards, Cow Kidney...a lot of cultures eat organ meats including our own (admit it, we all have had liver at least once and it wasn't that bad!). By products in dog foods are additives and part of plant and animals that are not consumable like the husks from different grains (sweepings from mill houses), hair, teeth...things like that. Dog foods all have a vegetable or grain as a filler as well. You can't turn meat and organ into nuggets. Grocery brand dog foods #1 ingredient is usually corn...dogs have no need for grains of any kind, in fact, they're harmful. They're the #1 cause of allergies and diabetes in dogs. Premium dog foods usually don't contain grains but they replace them with vegetable matter again, to make the kibbles. They use vegetables like Sweet Potatoes which aren't a grain but are a starch and break down into sugar, just like grains. Dogs are carnivores, they have no use for any vegetable matter, they're short digestive tracts mean they can't even break down vegetable matter, it comes out the same way it went in (feed a dog carrots and when he poops the carrots will still be there undigested). Dogs have large fangs for holding prey and sharp dagger like molars for cutting through flesh and cracking bone (to get to the marrow). All true omnivores including us and bears have flat molars for grinding vegetation and longer digestive tracts similar to both a herbivore's and a carnivore's digestive tract. If dogs were omnivores they'd have flat grinding surfaces too! A dog, a cat, a lion, a wolf, a snake, no animal who's a carnivore can live on muscle meat and bone alone. Organs contain vitamins and minerals found nowhere else in prey animals and to live carnivores must consume organs as well. The only single food a human can live off of for an extended period of time is a raw whole animal, let's say fish for example. You can find vitamin A (and fresh water) in the eyes, all of the essential amino acids throughout the fish, Omegas 3 and 6 in their fat. But if you stuck to the muscle meat alone you'd die of protein starvation in a fairly short period of time. Luckily you don't have to worry about eating raw fish eyes unless you get stranded on a desert island but in the case of our dogs and cats, they actually like, want to eat, and are designed to eat raw prey animals, fish, beef, venison and just about everything else out there! A diet balanced in organ, meat, and bone will keep your dog healthier than any dog food. With health comes happiness and longevity, there's no argument in the argument of dog food vs raw except for the people ignorant to the facts and the people who stand to gain from selling dog food. I hope this helped, good luck.

Pig ears are high in calories so keep away from them. Rawhide is just that, the hide of a cow. When dogs are just pups, they need to be trained to let go of anything that they have. Your girl is not respecting you as the alpha. You need to take away the rawhide, tell her good girl, and then give it back to her.