Dog Food

The popularity of pets in the UK has often led us to be described (mainly by ourselves), as a nation of animal-lovers. Unfortunately, inviting cats and dogs into our homes has a negative impact on the welfare of other animals. 

Whether its related to factory farming, fishing or animal testing, we take a look at how we can use our purchasing power to ensure a better situation for all animals and not just the ones that we live with.

There is not much point in ensuring a happier life for animals if we end up destroying the environment they (and we) live in, so we also take a look at dog food packaging, palm oil and ways to reduce your dog’s ‘carbon pawprint’. This way we can purchase in a way that is good for dogs, people and planet. 

Dog Food and Animal Welfare 

As much of the widely available meat-based dog food is generally made from by-products from the human food industry, people may feel it doesn’t make any difference what standards we choose, because the meat would otherwise be discarded.

However, when you buy dog food with low-animal welfare standards it increases the value of farming in that way.

Factory farms can not only profit from the human-grade meat but from the byproducts as well. If dog-owners buy higher welfare animal products – organic for example – it helps to create more value for those farmers.

Organic dog food for higher welfare

The IAMS (US) website has a blog about natural, holistic and organic pet food where they question what value an organic diet has for your pet. But actually, (sorry Fido) this isn’t all about them. It has significant consequences for farm animal welfare, environmental impacts, and antibiotic use.

Organic certification ensures the highest standards of animal welfare.

According to the SOIL Association, not only are animals required to be free range but they:

• Must have access to pasture (when weather and ground conditions permit) and be truly free range.
• Must have plenty of space – which helps to reduce stress and disease.
• Are fed a diet that is as natural as possible and free from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Over a million tonnes of GM crops are imported each year to feed the majority of non-organic livestock which produce chicken, eggs, pork, bacon, milk, cheese, etc. This practice is banned under organic standards.
• Graze and forage naturally on organic pasture (grasses and other crops) where only natural fertilisers are used and pesticides are severely restricted. 
• Must not routinely be given antibiotics. Farm animals now account for almost two-thirds of all antibiotics used in the EU. These are passed to us through the food chain.

The following brands offer an organic dog food: Yarrah, Benevo, Lily’s Kitchen, Burns and Simpsons Premium.

Yarrah is an entirely organic company apart from its fish, which is certified sustainable through the MSC. See below for more details.

Factory farmed rabbits in dog food

Our last pet food guides, in 2015, reported on the 2014 undercover investigation by animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) which revealed that rabbit meat, perhaps assumed to come from the wild, is actually from factory-farmed rabbits.

CIWF are still campaigning on this issue and released an End the Cage Age report in 2018. 

Almost all of the 120 million commercially farmed rabbits in the EU are kept in wire cages. They cannot lie stretched out or stand with their ears up. Some don’t even have enough space to perform a single hop.

The top three EU producers of rabbit meat are Spain, France and Italy, where at least 97% are caged. 

Barren cages (basic box cages with no modifications to improve quality of life or allow for natural behaviour) are banned in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In France, there are about a dozen farms using organic standards, where rabbits are kept free-range in a large outdoor enclosure or in outdoor mobile runs.

Avoiding rabbit varieties of pet food is one solution, but choosing organic ensures that there are no factory-farmed animals in your pet food.

If you are an EU citizen you can add your signature to End the Cage Age.

Four Paws also has a petition to retailers to stop importing caged rabbit meat.

Dog Food Labelling

Pet food labels use anthropomorphised descriptions to appeal to pets’ human owners – broth, pâté, chicken and asparagus, roasted chicken and beef entrée...

The ingredients must be listed in descending order by weight. They can be indicated using category names such as ‘meat and animal derivatives’, or under their own individual names. If particular attention is drawn to a specific ingredient (e.g. ‘With Chicken’), the percentage of that ingredient must also be listed. If the packaging says ‘chicken & rice’, the named meat minimum content must be 26%. 

But, if it says ‘rich in’ chicken the minimum must be just 14% and ‘flavoured with’ or simply ‘with’ will contain a bare 4% minimum.

More often than not, on most mainstream brands you’ll see ‘meat and animal derivatives’ listed as the main ingredient. ‘Animal derivatives’ are anything other than the muscle tissue or ‘meat’ and may mean internal organs, bones, poultry heads, feathers, hooves and feet.

Whilst it might seem to make sense to use up these by-products, it also may mean that your pet is not getting the nutrition that it needs.

 Cats and dogs need the right amount of protein, the percentage of protein shown as ‘Analytical Constituents’ on the label is, unfortunately, no help, as it includes low-quality indigestible protein.

Look at the ingredients label: if chicken or lamb or identified organs are listed first then they are a good source of protein, but if meat derivatives or byproducts are listed first, they may be a less-good source.

Grains and cereals are another one of those generic sources of proteins that may be high or low quality and are used by many manufacturers as a filler. Other ingredients in pet food may include sugar, salt and artificial colourings, even though dogs, for example, are largely colour blind.

Other words used by pet food companies to communicate to you that their product is ‘good’ in some way can be misleading:

'Natural'

One of the most common words we found on companies’ websites during our research was ‘natural’, which Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) have criticised as being meaningless. 

CIWF says, “Chicken labelled as ‘all natural’ can come from factory farms where the animals have been selectively bred to grow so rapidly that their legs become painfully crippled from the weight of their bodies.”

Sign the CIWF petition for honest labelling.

Free run or free range?

We also came across the term ‘free run’ for chicken, ducks and turkey, which sounds a lot like ‘free range’. Free run just means the birds are cage-free but are still indoors. Free range means they must have access to some outdoor space, and CIWF says, “Because they grow slower and have opportunities for exercise, free-range chickens have better leg and heart health.”

Dolphin friendly

On the MPM Products website (owner of the Applaws and Encore brands) the company used the word ‘ethical’ several times without any explanation. On its Ethical Policy page, it said that “All of the fish in our recipes is sea caught using dolphin friendly methods and we only use species from sustainable resources.” Again, it did not explain what it meant. It did state “The tuna that we fish is further accredited by the Earth Island Institute.”

According to EII, ‘dolphin friendly’ is a term used in Europe and is usually interchangeable with ‘Dolphin Safe’, which was defined in US law in 1990, as tuna caught without deliberately encircling any dolphins with tuna nets during the entire trip of the tuna vessel.

EII states that “Dolphin deaths in tuna nets have declined by 99% since 1990”, but Greenpeace has pointed out, “Dolphin safe does not mean ocean safe. It means that one fishing method that targets tuna that swim with dolphins is not used to catch the tuna. What about the rays and turtles?!"

GMOs in animal feed

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are another controversial ingredient. While they may not be in the final product, unless the meat is organic they are highly likely to have been used in the animal feed.

• The UK government website stated at the time of writing that: “According to the European Feed Manufacturers’ Association (FEFAC), at least 85% of the EU’s compound feed production is labelled to indicate that it contains GM or GM-derived material.”
• Yarrah only makes organic (and therefore GM-free) products.
• Lily’s Kitchen, Benevo, Burns and Simpsons Premium have some organic (and therefore GM-free) lines.
• Yora told us, in January 2019, that its products are made from larvae that have been fed with organic food byproducts.
• Beco told us in March 2019 that its meat sources were not fed GMOs.
• All varieties from Benevo and V-Dog, (and some sizes of the vegetarian dog food by Burns) are listed as approved by the Vegetarian Society so are required to be GM free.
• Ami is no longer approved by the Vegetarian Society, but it is a plant-based food and one of its products was marked GM-free. It did not have a publicly available. 
• GM policy and could not be reached for comment, but was not assumed to contain GMOs as it was based in Italy and GMOs must be labelled in the EU.
• None of the other companies stated that the meat in their pet food was not from GM-fed animals.
• Interestingly, although Mars had previously lobbied against the labelling of products containing GMOs in the USA, in December 2018, it was reported to have chosen voluntarily to disclose all GMOs in its foods.

Fish sustainability

On our score table we have awarded an extra positive mark for product sustainability to products that carry the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, unless it is an insignificant amount of an otherwise uncertified product.

In our previous guide, several mainstream brands got this accolade, but now none do (the one Mars brand that still has the logo turned out to also only contain 4% fish, and a lot of other uncertified ingredients, so we didn’t give it a positive mark). However, one of our Best Buys, Yarrah, only uses fish if it is MSC certified and its other ingredients are certified organic. Beco’s MSC dog food contains 40% MSC fish.

See our Supermarkets Guide for more on MSC certification.

As well as the effect on habitats, fishing also has human rights implications. For more information on this see our Guide to Cat Food.

Packaging & recycling

Tins and foil can be recycled. Dry food has the advantage that it may be stored in plastic-free paper-based packaging. It also keeps better so you can buy it in bulk to further cut down on packaging needs. 

Can a dog be vegetarian?

As people become more aware of poor animal welfare standards and high environmental impacts in the meat industry, many are starting to look into veggie and vegan options for their pets.

Many vegan and vegetarian brands provide tasters, so you can see how your animal reacts to a more plant-based diet. You can purchase taster packs of Ami, Benevo and V-dog for 80p-£1 from www.veggiepets.com. You can also speak to your vet about your animal’s specific dietary requirements and how a vegetarian or vegan diet might impact them.

We understand that this is a contentious issue, and so we reached out to two experts to give their views on whether it is safe for pets to become vegan – Daniella Dos Santos and Andrew Knight. You can see their debate unfold in our shopping guide for cat food.

Other ethical concerns

Tax Avoidance

The following companies received Ethical Consumer’s worst rating for likely use of tax avoidance strategies:

Walmart Inc. (Asda); Tesco; Nestlé SA; Wm Morrisons Supermarkets; Schwarz Beteiligungs-KG (Lidl); Colgate-Palmolive Co; Spectrum Brands; Marks and Spencer Group; John Lewis Partnership Trust; J Sainsbury’s.

Only Siepmann Stiftung (Aldi Sud) received a middle rating. The rest of the companies on the table received a best rating.

Controversial Technologies

Where companies have lost a half mark under Controversial Technologies it is related to the use of GMOs, widely used in animal feed, unless it is organic.

We covered GMOs in more detail above. Tesco lost a full mark because it was also involved with nanotechnology.