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"Dog food...it's not just for breakfast burritos anymore."

You're closer than you think:

An acquaintance used to work as a computer programmer for a very large meat packing business in the Midwest. As is always the custom for large companies who employ computer people, he got to tour the plant. When I worked at Boeing, I got to see where they make 737’s as well as a couple of parts facilities.

Well, while touring the plant he was able to see all the ways the cow and carcass were used. The interesting thing was what they did with the leftover carcass when everything had pretty much been gleaned off. What they did was but all this stuff into a huge vat of water and boiled it until it became this gray, chunky, liquid mass. They then ran it through a centrifuge to get rid of all the water and ground it up into a gray paste.

This is where it gets interesting. There was a conveyor belt at the end of this process with 1 ½ foot square cardboard boxes with a plastic bag liner slowly moving by the “output tube” of this gray slop. On each box was stamped the word “Purina.” So now you know what “meat and meat by-products” actually means.

So anyway, he’s watching the boxes go by, stop, and get a load of gray stuff when suddenly the line stops. Someone fiddles with the box labeler and the line starts again. As the new boxes come down the line to accept their glop, he notices the label has been changed. Where they used to say Purina, they now say “Taco Bell.”

I’m sure it won’t hurt you, but it sure doesn’t whet my appetite.