Is That Made From Animals?
Content Updated October 13, 2007
Obvious Animal Materials and Ingredients
In case you didn't know, leather is made from animal hides. Fur is made from animal coats (skin included). Meat is a nice way of saying "animal flesh." If something on an ingredient list contains the name of an animal (e.g. shark, fish, cod, boar, horse, turtle, emu, snail, sheep, sable, mink, etc.), you can be sure that there's an animal body part in it. If something contains wool or wool extract, it came from an animal farmed and used for wool. If a body part is listed, it's probably a body part, not an unusual name for a flower.
Sneaky
Some manufacturers like to be a bit more sneaky about animal ingredients they use. They'll list the scientific names for an animals rather than common names (and the average consumer doesn't know the scientific name).
Unusual
Sometimes an animal's common name may be listed, but there are so many animals, it's highly unlikely that you know the names of all of them. Until the last decade, many consumers would assume that alpaca was a plant or a chemical if seen on a list of ingredients. Today, most of us know that an alpaca is an animal.
Naive
Some animal products are forgotten in our pre-packaged food / pre-manufactured society. We've become accustomed to just seeing a product in a bottle without thinking about where it came from. It amazes me how many people don't know that gelatin (the stuff in Jello and marshmallows) is made from animal hides, bones, hooves, etc. I've met more than a few people who didn't know that silk was from the silk worm. There's also things like lanolin, tallow, pearl, ivory, and down that many people use but don't know what they are.
Vague
Some things are vague and don't indicate if they came from an animal, mineral, or vegetable source. Enzymes could be from a plant or from the inside of a baby cow's stomach. Most caring companies will tell you if something is vegetable or mineral based, but when in doubt assume it contains an animal.
Look It Up
If you're ever in doubt, do a search on the Internet. Look up each ingredient individually. You can even look it up on an online dictionary. The answer shouldn't be hard to find.
...by Feed