Pet Food Upcycling?

I was expecting the pet food industry to have a lot of signs and symbols on their packaging, but was surprised to see very little of that on an actual shelf full of products.  Some bragged that they were "Veterinarian Approved" in what looked like little seals of approval, but I'm sure those were just empty sales blurbs.

As with the packaging in other industries, there is a certain iconography when products try to distinguish themselves from each other to catch your attention (a.k.a. your dollars).  Sometimes the icons were no more than glorified bullets in a bullet point list, like this one:

Is "freeze dried" really a bonus worth mentioning?

Here is one package that got me thinking, though:

It boasts about using upcycled ingredients.  That was just confusing at first.  Upcycle ... upcycle ... where have I heard that before?  Oh yeah, it's when you turn waste items into new products, like melting down old tires to make shoes.  Do you really want to do this with food?  Is it any different from just using the same byproducts that the other brands use?  Either way, you're taking technically edible bits that would otherwise be discarded and turning them into edible bits meant to be eaten.

But ... upcycling?  It does not sound right.  Maybe they did their research and found that the word added a little bit of a glow to the product among certain demographics.  One person's waste is another person's dog's kibble.  I support trying to waste as little as possible.  Byproducts are not necessarily bad, just not attractive to people.  At home, we give all kinds of scrapings to our little buddies, sometimes specifically those bits we don't really want to eat ourselves.  But "upcycling" still feels more like industrial or DIY home crafting to me.

I expect that there are boards of industry standards, or independent groups offering certifications of quality.  I just haven't found those yet.