Horse and kangaroo meat cat food is for sale on Amazon!

MovingForwards

Gavin83 said:

Poster_586329 said:

I was surprised to see tins of horse meat and of kangaroo meat cat food for sale on Amazon.

I could post the links here, but maybe better not to.

I don't think it's illegal but it's distasteful (so to speak!) and perhaps carries health risks.  From what I read, the kangaroos are caught in the wild and can be diseased.

Why is it anymore distasteful than any other type of meat?

Horse meat is amazing by the way, it's like a better beef. I'd recommend anyone to try it if they get the chance.

S/he may have already tried it 😉

I also don't see what the big deal is, I thought horse meat has been in pet food for years anyway.

donnac2558

Yes, horse meat has been in dog and cat food for years.  Back when mad  cow disease came to the public attention people freaked.worrying about they pets getting it.  That is when was generally told not to worry as it was.horse meat.

The.shop I used to get my cat food once had protesters outside because it be came known the food they sold had horse meat in it.  The owner said it has always been horse meat for years makes  no difference if it says chicken,fish or beef there is.horse.meat in it.

sinar

Quite often these types of pet foods with unusual meats are very good for pets with allergies to more conventional meats, and can be really beneficial to pets in that respect, I have a cat who is allergic to conventional cat foods and gets a really upset tummy when eating them, I now feed him anti allergenic dried food, raw whole prey, and occasional tins of cat meat with novel proteins such as these.

I am a vegetarian and don’t eat any meat but I don’t think kangaroo and horse is any more or less ethical than eating sheep or chicken.

TBagpuss

Why distasteful? (Genuine question) Is it just the unfamiliarity or are there other reasons? 
I've eaten kangaroo - my local farm shop sells it, together with ostrich meat and either alligator or crocodile (I can't recall which) 
I would assume that the risk of disease is no different that other types of game, if it is being sourced from wild animals, or from other farmed meat if it's farmed. 
I've never had horse but wouldn't be remotely surprised to find it's in the food I feed my cats, and I would happily buy and feed them food made from insects  if they were willing to eat it, assuming it wasn't significantly more expensive than the kind I normally buy. 
Come to that, I'd have no issue with eating insects myself if they taste OK and the texture is palatable. I don't eat prawns and shrimps' as I dislike the texture, so I suspect I wouldn't like the mealworm type of insect unless they were fairly heavily processed.

sheramber

Your cat will have licked a lot more unsavoury things than insects. Think how it grooms and cleans itself.

clive0510

Poster_586329 said:

Actually you've reminded me, I've seen kangaroo steaks in the middle aisle at Lidl!

and the middle aisle is not normally refridgerated. 

TripleH

Go to Australia, in the chiller cabinets you can have human and pet food side by side (nearly). This coming from the chap who once picked up avtube of what he thought was very good vslue pate before he read the labrl properly.

Soot2006

I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and I need to make ethical choices to feed my dogs. These choices have led into a very interesting world of ethical farms and culling. As such, my dogs gets a lot of venison and Dartmoor ponies (culled stock) as well as all sorts of interesting things from high welfare, ethical farms. The only thing they rarely get is poultry as that's quite difficult to get in a high welfare format.

It took me a while to get round to this concept esp as a horse lover and keeper myself, but 15 years later I am now a lot more comfortable with this than with the thought of buying unknown random meat in a bag of dog food. I am privileged as I have the means to make this ethical decision, but some bags of dog food are not cheap, either!

Most of the big name meat suppliers for dog offer horse meat now. It's very popular in the UK.

purplebutterfly

Never eaten horse but I have eaten kangaroo, cocodile, emu, snake and camel (camel meat is incredible) so I see not reason not to feed my cats the same meat.  

In fact I  quite often buy Bozita with reindeer and elk meat in it and at Xmas I  have to reassure the girls they are not eating Rudolph 😉

As a meat eater, I find it my moral obligation to treat all meat the same.  If I wouldn't eat kangaroo then I shouldn't eat cow.