Animal Plasma in Dog Food - Dog Nutrition DB

Animal plasma is the fluid component of animal blood. It’s a spray-dried ingredient with a complex nutrient profile. But animal plasma in dog food is mainly used as a gelling helper.

Contents

What is Animal Plasma?

Animal blood is one of the main by-products of the meat industry. While blood meal contains the whole dried ingredient, plasma is just the cell-free part of animal blood.

Animal plasma is made from the blood of mainly pigs and cattle and contains a complex mixture of proteins.

It is obtained by extracting all the red and white blood cells by centrifuging (spinning at high speeds) to separate cells from plasma.

Plasma is a yellowish liquid that contains a large variety of proteins of dissolved blood proteins like albumin, globulin, or clotting proteins such as fibrinogen-type glycoproteins.

It also contains some other compounds you’d expect to find in blood like bilirubin, carotenoids, cytokines, immunoglobulins, hemoglobin, glucose, enzymes, fatty acids, metal ions, and more.

Beef or pork plasma in dog food offers lots of nutritional value and also has some functional properties which make it interesting for manufacturers.

Animal Plasma in Dog Foods

It is collected from the blood of animals slaughtered for human consumption. As a dog food ingredient, liquid plasma gets spray-dried into a cream-colored powder.

Spray-dried animal plasma is a functional and palatable ingredient.

It is a highly digestible ingredient with up to 80% protein that can be an excellent source of amino acids and boost the protein content of dog food^[4].

Replacing lower-quality by-products with animal plasma can improve the overall nutrient digestibility of dog food.

Spray-dried plasma is used in dry and wet dog food, dog treats
or supplements due to its functional properties and digestibility.

Some manufacturers highlight plasma as having potential benefits for gut health or the immune system when used in dry foods because of its functional compounds like immunoglobulins.

But since immunoglobulins are heat-sensitive they usually don’t survive dog food processing. In dry dog food, however, they can be added by spray-coating the finished kibble.

Kibble coated with animal plasma has been shown to improve overall digestion in dogs and reduce ‘output’^[3].

And pork immunoglobulins have been demonstrated to partially resist the digestion process in dogs^[6].

But still, there’s actually no conclusive evidence that feeding animal plasma strengthens the immune response in dogs^[2].

In wet dog food, animal plasma is used because it has gelling properties and is used to achieve certain textures^[5].

Animal plasma forms a stable and compact gel when cooked with water at high temperatures. It is excellent for making loaf-type products or fake “meat chunks” in canned foods.

As a texture-modifying ingredient, it can replace other emulsifiers, binders, or gelling agents like starch, wheat gluten, egg, carrageenan, or other gums and stabilizers.

Bovine or porcine plasma in dog food offers lots of benefits and a way to use an abundant animal by-product.

But it can also help manufacturers save on real meat and boost the protein content. According to suppliers, blood plasma can be used as a protein extender to make chunky “meat analogues”.

Spray-dried beef or porcine plasma is a “label-friendly” natural ingredient. In addition, hydrolyzed plasma is sometimes listed as a natural flavor or digest.

What is Animal Plasma?

Animal Plasma in Dog Foods

Further Reading