poultry fat
"Poultry fat" is bird fat without a species — one word away from honest. How Bowlmark scores unnamed sources.
Also appears on labels as: poultry fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols)
What it is
Poultry fat is rendered fat from unspecified birds — chicken, turkey, duck, or whatever blend the supplier ran. It does the same nutritional work as chicken fat; it just declines to tell you which bird.
Why it's in pet food
Buying "poultry" instead of "chicken" gives the manufacturer sourcing flexibility as commodity prices move. That flexibility is invisible nutrition-wise and total transparency-wise — the label reads the same whatever went in.
How Bowlmark scores it
Scores are deterministic math over the printed label — the rules below apply to every product identically, and nothing estimates or fills in a blank.
"Poultry fat" is an unnamed animal source: a single 20-point deduction on the ingredient-quality pillar, applied once for the class. Chicken fat and duck fat — named fats — carry no deduction; one word of specificity is the entire difference.
Common questions
Answers come from this entry and the scoring rules above — reviewed before publish, like everything else on this page. For anything about your own pet, your vet knows best.
What is poultry fat in dog food?
Rendered fat from unspecified birds — chicken, turkey, duck, or whatever blend the supplier ran. It does the same nutritional work as chicken fat; it just declines to tell you which bird.
Is poultry fat as good as chicken fat?
Nutritionally it does the same work; the difference is transparency. Buying "poultry" instead of "chicken" gives the manufacturer sourcing flexibility as commodity prices move — invisible nutrition-wise, total transparency-wise. One word of specificity is the entire difference.
How does Bowlmark score poultry fat?
"Poultry fat" is an unnamed animal source: a single 20-point deduction on the ingredient-quality pillar, applied once for the class. Chicken fat and duck fat — named fats — carry no deduction.
Foods that list poultry fat
Ranked by score where scores exist. Placement here is never sold.
Sources
Related ingredients
Further reading
Cite this page
Bowlmark. "Poultry fat in pet food — what it is and how it scores." https://www.bowlmark.com/ingredient/poultry-fat
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