<p>Some scholars and activists argue that, under certain circumstances, the flesh of non-human animals not intentionally killed for food—such as roadkill, animals killed during crop harvesting, and leftovers from other people’s meat-based meals—should be used as food for humans or other animals, since doing so may reduce reliance on farmed animal flesh. A prominent justification is the “waste argument,” according to which allowing such flesh to go to waste is morally wrong and may therefore generate a duty to use it. This paper develops three objections to that argument. Existing concepts of food waste do not identify relevant cases with sufficient precision, risk generating implausibly expansive duties, and fail to explain why every instance of food waste should be regarded as morally wrong. I then adopt an ameliorative approach to develop a relational and context-sensitive concept of food waste, according to which dead animals’ flesh counts as waste when it could replace farmed animal flesh without supporting further animal suffering or violating other relevant norms. Although this revised account remains dependent on contextual and other normative commitments, it provides a more defensible basis for the waste argument.</p>