Chicken Fat

Usually, yes. Pure fat contains no protein, so chicken fat usually causes no problems even in cats with chicken allergies.

Chicken fat is rendered fat from chickens and is one of the most widely used fats in dry cat food. Cornell's Feline Health Center describes cats as obligate carnivores that rely on nutrients found only in animal products. Chicken fat is one of those animal ingredients, used for energy and taste. For a cat with a medical condition, your veterinarian can advise on its diet.

Source: vet.cornell.edu

Chicken fat adds concentrated calories, flavor and fatty acids. Tufts veterinary nutritionists note that fat provides more than twice the calories of protein or carbohydrate, so it raises the energy of a kibble without much bulk. Chicken fat also carries linoleic acid and some arachidonic acid. Cats can make very little arachidonic acid themselves, so animal fats are a common way to supply it.

Source: sites.tufts.edu

No. Chicken fat is the rendered fat alone, and it contains almost no protein. Chicken by-product meal is a dry, ground protein ingredient made from rendered chicken parts other than the main muscle meat, such as necks and feet. The two can appear on the same label, but they do different jobs in the recipe, one supplying fat and the other mostly protein.

On most cat food labels, chicken fat is followed by the name of its preservative, often mixed tocopherols, which are forms of vitamin E. Fat goes rancid when it reacts with oxygen, so an antioxidant is added to slow that process. Some foods use other antioxidants instead. Reading the words in parentheses after chicken fat tells you which one a recipe uses.

Chicken fat gets 4 out of 5 from Pettings, which lists it as a named animal fat. It shows up on 75 of the 149 dry cat foods we list. Each food's page shows how the whole recipe scores, so one ingredient score is only part of the picture.