Why we built PetFoodRate (and why pet food labels are designed to confuse you)

I bought my first dog kibble in a supermarket aisle in 2019. Twelve identical bags lined up. Every label promised "real meat", "balanced nutrition", "complete formula", "vet recommended". Some had pictures of green meadows, others had a wolf staring into the distance. One was twice the price of the next. None of them told me what was actually in the bag without me squinting at 4-point font on the back.

I picked the one with the wolf. My dog ate it for three years before I realised the third ingredient was wheat and the second was an unidentified animal by-product. The wolf, it turns out, did not eat wheat.

This is the story of why we built PetFoodRate.

The information asymmetry is by design

Pet food in Europe and the US is regulated. In Europe by EU Regulation 767/2009 and the FEDIAF (European Pet Food Industry Federation) guidelines. In the US by the AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) and the FDA. But the regulation only forces brands to disclose what is in the bag, not why it matters. The composition list on the back is technically true. It is also nearly impossible to interpret without specialist knowledge.

Three mechanisms conspire against you as a consumer:

1. Ingredient splitting

A bag can contain 35 percent corn total but list it as "ground corn", "corn gluten meal", "corn flour" so each individual fraction ranks lower than the meat at 18 percent. The bag legally says "chicken first" but actually contains twice as much corn.

This technique is pervasive. When we analysed the composition of Pedigree Adult (score D, 38/100), we found corn derivatives in three of the first five positions. Combined, corn is the primary ingredient. But the label creates the impression that meat leads the formula.

2. Vague terms

"Meat and animal by-products", "animal fats", "animal derivatives", "transformed animal proteins" are legally authorized by the FEDIAF and AAFCO. They tell you nothing about which species the protein came from.

At Royal Canin Medium Adult (score C, 58/100), the fourth ingredient is "animal fats" without species identification. The fat source changes batch to batch based on commodity market pricing. Royal Canin knows exactly which fat is in each lot. They choose not to print it.

3. Marketing inversion

The front of the bag features the best ingredient at the highest visible position. The back lists the actual composition by weight. A bag screaming "Real beef" on the front may legally contain only 4 percent beef.

According to AAFCO labeling rules, the naming convention itself reveals the content: "Beef Dog Food" requires 95 percent beef. "Beef Dinner" requires 25 percent. "With Beef" requires only 3 percent. "Beef Flavour" requires zero percent real beef. Whiskas, Felix, Pedigree, Cesar, Beneful, Bakers all use the "with" or "flavour" format. It is legal. It is also misleading.

The Nutri-Score moment for pet food

Five years ago in France, a public health initiative changed how supermarket food is sold. The Nutri-Score is a five-letter colour-coded grade (A green to E red) printed on the front of food packaging. It compresses an entire nutritional analysis into a single letter that takes half a second to read.

The results are documented. According to a study published in Nutrients (Egnell et al., 2019), the Nutri-Score improved consumers' ability to identify healthier products by 18 percent compared to no label. Within two years, brands started reformulating products to climb from D to C, from C to B. Nestle, Danone, and Intermarche publicly announced reformulations.

Pet food never got its Nutri-Score. The pet food industry, dominated by Mars (Pedigree, Whiskas, Royal Canin, Sheba, Cesar) and Nestle Purina (Pro Plan, Friskies, Felix, ONE), never supported such an initiative. There is no public mandatory rating system. Information remains scattered between hard-to-read labels, vet recommendations often sponsored by the brands themselves, and unqualified consumer reviews.

The scale of the problem

To understand why an independent rating system matters, consider the market:

• The global pet food market is worth 150 billion USD in 2026, according to Grand View Research.
• In France, 49 percent of households own at least one companion animal (source: FACCO/Kantar 2024).
• Food accounts for 60 to 70 percent of annual spending on a pet.
• Fewer than 12 percent of pet owners read the ingredient list before purchasing (Kantar consumer survey, 2023).
• The average pet owner cannot name the first ingredient in the food they currently feed (Harris Interactive, 2022).

The gap between the 12 percent who read and the 100 percent who pay is exactly the space PetFoodRate occupies.

What PetFoodRate does

We built PetFoodRate to fill that gap. Every product in our database is graded A (excellent) to E (insufficient), on a 100-point scale, based on five weighted dimensions:

Dimension	Weight	What it measures
Proteins	35%	Named animal proteins in top positions, fresh vs. meal, digestibility
Nutrition	20%	Macronutrient balance, FEDIAF/AAFCO compliance, Ca:P ratio, omega ratio
Undesirables	20%	Absence of BHA, BHT, colorants, sugars, ethoxyquin
Transparency	15%	Species specified, percentages declared, source traceability
Adaptability	10%	Species-appropriate formulation (obligate carnivore, omnivore, herbivore)

The full methodology with calculation formulas is published at /methodology/. Every product page shows exactly which sub-scores drove the final letter. No black box.

Every ingredient listed in a product composition links to its dedicated ingredient page with a full explanation of its role, its nutritional impact, and its controversies when they exist. We currently have 57 ingredients documented with bilingual content (English and French).

What makes us different

Multi-species coverage. We do not just rate dog and cat food. Our database covers dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, hamsters, fish, birds, reptiles, horses, and guinea pigs. Ten species, because the pet food market is not limited to two. Browse by species: best kibble for dogs, best wet food for cats, best ferret food.

Side-by-side comparisons. The compare tool lets you put any two products face to face with their five sub-scores, top ingredients, and price per kilo. For example: Royal Canin vs Hill's reveals a 14-point gap between two brands that vets recommend interchangeably.

Label reading education. We publish guides to help you read labels on your own, so you are not dependent on us or any other rating system. The seven red flag checklist takes 90 seconds and captures most of the signal.

Full bilingual content. Every product, every ingredient, every guide is available in English and French. We expand to more languages as the audience grows.

Label education: our mission

A rating system that gives you a letter grade but keeps you dependent on that grade has not actually solved the problem. It has just replaced one form of opacity with another.

Our second mission, running parallel to the database, is to make you capable of reading a label yourself and reaching your own conclusions. We do this through three resources:

The label-reading guide. The how to read a pet food label article walks through the anatomy of a European or US ingredient list step by step: how ingredients are ordered by weight before cooking, how to spot splitting, how to interpret guaranteed analysis percentages, and what the seven most common red flag patterns look like in practice. You do not need a nutrition degree. The checklist fits on a phone screen.

The ingredient encyclopedia. The /ingredients/ section documents every ingredient we have encountered across our 1,300+ product database. Each entry explains what the ingredient is, where it comes from, what nutritional role it plays, whether it is species-appropriate, and where scientific controversy exists. Wheat is not automatically bad for a dog, but it is a filler in a food marketed as high-protein. BHA is an antioxidant that is approved by AAFCO but classified as a possible human carcinogen by the IARC - and there is no reason it needs to be in a premium kibble when tocopherols (vitamin E) do the same job without the controversy. The encyclopedia currently covers 57 ingredients and grows with every new product we add.

Brand pages. Each brand page collects all products from that manufacturer in one place, with their average score, their score distribution, and their most common ingredient patterns. A brand page makes it easy to see whether a high score on one product is consistent across the range or whether it is an outlier in an otherwise poor-quality catalogue. The Royal Canin brand page shows exactly this: strong veterinary lines, weaker supermarket lines, and a transparency gap on fat sourcing that is consistent across the range.

The goal is that a reader who spends 20 minutes on PetFoodRate leaves knowing how to evaluate any bag they pick up - whether it is in our database or not. The rating system is the shortcut. The education is the foundation.

What we are not

We are not a vet. We are not a lab. We do not certify products or sell certifications. If your animal has a health problem, consult a veterinarian. Our role is to help you make an informed choice before problems appear, by making labels readable and comparable.

We do not accept payment from brands. We do not run paid promotions. We do not have brand partnerships. The business model is display advertising (when audience supports it) and affiliate links to retailers like Amazon, Chewy, Zooplus when readers click through to buy. The affiliate link never changes the rating. If a product is rated D, it stays D regardless of commercial considerations.

The structural market problem

To understand why an independent rating site is not a luxury but a structural necessity, you need to look at who controls the information environment that most pet owners navigate.

The duopoly. Mars Petcare and Nestle Purina together hold more than 70 percent of the global pet food market by revenue. Mars owns Pedigree, Whiskas, Royal Canin, Sheba, Cesar, Iams (in some markets), Eukanuba, and Nutro. Nestle Purina owns Pro Plan, Friskies, Felix, Purina ONE, Beneful, and Dog Chow. The remaining 30 percent is split between hundreds of independent brands, many of which are growing fast - but in a supermarket or veterinary clinic, the shelf is built for the two giants.

Market concentration at this level creates a specific problem: the dominant players have no incentive to increase label transparency, because transparency would disproportionately benefit the challengers who out-compete them on ingredient quality. A mandatory front-of-pack grade like Nutri-Score for human food would visibly separate a 72/100 challenger brand from a 47/100 mass-market product. The incumbents have lobbied against such initiatives for decades in both the EU and the US.

Vet school sponsorship. The information asymmetry extends beyond the supermarket shelf into the clinic. A 2018 survey by the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) found that approximately 75 percent of veterinary nutrition courses in US and UK schools received material support from pet food manufacturers - primarily Hill's Science Diet (owned by Colgate-Palmolive), Royal Canin, and Purina. This support takes the form of curriculum materials, sponsored lectures, free product samples for graduates, and continuing education credits tied to brand-specific training.

This does not mean veterinarians are corrupt. It means the information they received during training was curated by the same companies whose products fill clinic shelves. A vet who recommends Royal Canin Sensitivity Control is not acting in bad faith - they are passing on the recommendation they were trained to make. But the recommendation is not independent of commercial relationships.

The result. Pet owners receive brand messaging on the bag, category-level guidance from a vet who was trained by the brand, and no independent benchmark. PetFoodRate is designed to be the benchmark that does not exist in either of those channels. Our scoring uses FEDIAF and AAFCO standards as a floor, not a ceiling - we hold products to what the science says a carnivore or omnivore needs, not to what the industry lobbied regulators to accept as a minimum.

You can read the full methodology and verify every calculation. If you disagree with a weight we assigned, the contact email is on /about/.

The 5 dimensions in practice

Abstract scoring criteria are easy to claim and hard to evaluate. Here is exactly how the five dimensions produce a score in practice, using a product most readers will recognise.

Royal Canin Medium Adult scores 58/100 (grade C).

This is a mainstream dry dog food positioned as a nutritionally complete diet for adult medium-breed dogs (11 to 25 kg). It is sold in veterinary clinics, specialist pet shops, and online. It is one of the best-selling products in its category in France. Here is how it scores on each dimension, as shown on its product page.

Proteins (35% weight): 18/35 points

The first ingredient is "dehydrated poultry protein" - a named animal protein, which is positive. The second is "rice" and the third is "corn". The fourth is "animal fats" with no species identified. The fifth is "wheat gluten" - a plant protein source used to inflate the crude protein percentage on the guaranteed analysis without adding digestible animal amino acids.

A dog food with a named first protein but plant proteins in positions 3 and 5, combined with an anonymous fat in position 4, earns a mid-range score on this dimension. It is not the worst possible composition - vague "meat and animal derivatives" across all five positions would score lower. But it falls well short of a food where fresh chicken and chicken meal occupy positions 1 and 2, with a named fat source in position 3. Score: 18 out of a possible 35.

Nutrition (20% weight): 12/20 points

The declared crude protein is 25 percent, crude fat 14 percent. Both are within FEDIAF adult maintenance ranges. The calcium to phosphorus ratio, calculated from the mineral declaration, is approximately 1.4:1 - within the 1.2:1 to 1.8:1 range FEDIAF recommends. Omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is not declared, which costs points on this dimension. The fibre declaration (2.5 percent crude fibre) is within range. No sugar is declared. Score: 12 out of a possible 20.

Undesirables (20% weight): 15/20 points

No BHA, no BHT, no ethoxyquin, no added sugars, no artificial colorants. Preservatives are not declared (which likely means the product uses tocopherols, but this is not stated explicitly - the lack of declaration costs a partial point on transparency grounds). Wheat gluten as a protein padding ingredient is flagged as an undesirable in our model because it inflates crude protein figures without equivalent biological value for dogs. Score: 15 out of a possible 20.

Transparency (15% weight): 7/15 points

Poultry protein is species-named (positive). Animal fats are not species-named (negative). Percentages of individual ingredients are not declared beyond the guaranteed analysis minimums required by EU law - the brand does not voluntarily disclose that dehydrated poultry protein constitutes, for example, 26 percent of the formula. The manufacturing location is disclosed (France). Score: 7 out of a possible 15.

Adaptability (10% weight): 6/10 points

The formula is appropriate for an adult omnivore dog. The carbohydrate load from rice, corn, and wheat gluten combined is higher than optimal for a species that evolved processing animal protein as a primary energy source, but it is not outside what a healthy adult dog can metabolise. The kibble geometry is size-adapted for medium breeds, which is product-category positioning rather than a nutritional factor. Score: 6 out of a possible 10.

Total: 18 + 12 + 15 + 7 + 6 = 58/100. Grade: C.

A C grade means the product meets basic nutritional requirements and contains no harmful additives, but shows structural weaknesses in protein sourcing transparency and ingredient quality that better alternatives in the same price range do not have. See the full product page for the complete breakdown, and /methodology/ for the scoring tables used for each sub-dimension.

Who we are

PetFoodRate is published by an editorial team of four pen names: Clara Bell (editorial), Max Kowalski (ingredient research), Sophie Lefevre (species nutrition), and Theo Blanchard (market analysis). We use pen names for a consistent editorial voice. The legal entity is disclosed at /about/ along with the contact email.

Where we are headed

We launched with 123 products and have grown to over 1,300 across 38 brands. Our pipeline automatically discovers new products via the Open Pet Food Facts (OPFF) database, scores them using our algorithm, and adds them to the database. The target for end of 2026: 3,000 products and 100 brands.

We publish weekly editorial pieces, brand comparison deep-dives, species nutrition guides, and ingredient encyclopedia entries. If a brand changes a recipe, we re-score within 30 days. If a brand challenges a grade with documentation, we publish the exchange and the revised score.

If you want a product graded that is not yet in our database, use the submission form to suggest it. We prioritise based on market volume and reader requests.

How to start

Five entry points:

1. The full rankings: 1,300+ products rated A to E, filterable by species, type, and market (France, US, UK, Europe).
2. Best products by category: top 10 lists by type and species, with score explanations.
3. The 7 red flags guide: learn to read a label in 90 seconds, without us. The guide covers ingredient splitting, vague protein naming, hidden sugar, synthetic preservatives, and three more patterns that appear in the majority of D and E-rated products we have analysed.
4. The ingredient encyclopedia: if you already know a specific ingredient is in your pet's current food and want to understand what it actually does - and whether it belongs there - start here. Each of the 57 entries links to the products in our database that contain it, so you can see real-world context alongside the nutritional explanation.
5. Brand comparison articles: if you are choosing between two brands and want the full breakdown - average score, score distribution, common ingredients, transparency patterns - the brand comparison series gives you the analysis in 10 minutes without needing to navigate individual product pages. Each article compares two brands across the full product range, not just cherry-picked lines.

The system is free and will remain free. Your pet cannot read the label. You can.

All rankings | Compare two products | Our methodology

For the French version: Pourquoi on a cree PetFoodRate

Sources

• FEDIAF Nutritional Guidelines for Complete and Complementary Pet Food, europeanpetfood.org

• EU Regulation 767/2009, eur-lex.europa.eu

• AAFCO Official Publication, Pet Food Labeling Guide, aafco.org

• FDA, Pet Food Labels - General, fda.gov

• Egnell M., et al., "Front-of-Pack Labeling and the Nutritional Quality of Students' Food Purchases", Nutrients, 2019

• Nutri-Score, Sante Publique France, santepubliquefrance.fr

• FACCO/Kantar, "Les Francais et leurs animaux de compagnie", 2024, facco.fr

• Grand View Research, Pet Food Market Size, grandviewresearch.com

• VIN (Veterinary Information Network), Survey on Veterinary Nutrition Education and Industry Sponsorship, 2018

• IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Volume 101 (BHA, BHT), iarc.fr

• Clara Bell, Editorial Lead, PetFoodRate