A dog food label has two jobs: it has to meet the law, and it has to sell the food. Knowing which parts are which makes it much easier to compare foods fairly.
What every UK label must show
By law, a dog food label has to include:
- Whether it’s complete or complementary. A complete food provides all the nutrients your dog needs each day when fed as instructed; a complementary food (a mixer, topper or treat) needs to be fed with something else.[1][6]
- The ingredients (called “composition”), in descending order by weight.[2]
- Analytical constituents: crude protein, crude fat, crude fibre and crude ash as percentages.[3] Moisture must also be stated when it’s over 14%, so you’ll see it on wet food.[4]
- Additives, listed under the heading “additives”.[1]
- Feeding instructions, a best before date, a batch number, the net weight, and the name and address of the business responsible.[1][2]
What the name tells you
The words in a product’s name follow an industry code that sets a minimum amount of the named ingredient[5]:
| On the pack | Minimum |
|---|---|
| “Chicken dinner”, “Chicken menu”, or the brand name plus “Chicken” | 26% |
| “Rich in chicken”, “High in chicken”, “Extra chicken” | 14% |
| “With chicken”, “Contains chicken” | 4% |
| “Flavoured with chicken” | More than 0%, less than 4% |
| “Chicken flavour” | None needed: the taste can come from flavouring |
So “with salmon” can mean as little as 4% salmon. The ingredient list is where you find the real amount.
Reading the ingredient list
Order is by weight going into the mix
Ingredients are listed by their weight when they go into the mix (the “mixing bowl” principle), and percentage claims use the same basis.[5] Fresh meat is mostly water, so it can be first on the list while dried ingredients further down supply much of the food once it’s cooked and dried.
Dried ingredients are listed at their dried weight
If an ingredient goes in dried, it’s listed by its dried weight.[5] A maker may also say what that equals rehydrated, for example “0.5% dried carrot, equivalent to 4.3% carrots”, but only as a claim, and never for meat meals.[5] We score the declared amount, not the “equivalent to” figure.
“Fresh” has a specific meaning
“Fresh” can only describe an ingredient that hasn’t been treated in any way except kept cold. Anything cooked, dried, frozen or otherwise preserved isn’t “fresh”.[5]
Category names hide the detail
Makers are allowed to use a category name instead of listing individual ingredients.[5] “Meat and animal derivatives” is one: it covers the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals and any products from processing the carcass.[5] It isn’t necessarily poor quality, as all animal material in pet food comes from animals passed fit for human consumption.[6] But you can’t tell which animal or which parts, so in our score an unnamed category earns nothing under “What kind of meat?”.
A quick checklist
- Complete or complementary?
- What’s the first ingredient, and is it a named meat or fish?
- Is the meat content given as a percentage?
- Are the animal sources named (“chicken fat”) or generic (“animal fat”)?
- Is the energy (kcal) given? Without it you can’t work out how much to feed.
Every food page on this site shows these answers, and says “Not on label” when the label doesn’t. See how we score.
Sources
- Regulation (EC) No 767/2009, Article 15 (as retained in UK law), legislation.gov.uk
- Regulation (EC) No 767/2009, Article 17, legislation.gov.uk
- Regulation (EC) No 767/2009, Annex VII, legislation.gov.uk
- Regulation (EC) No 767/2009, Annex I, legislation.gov.uk
- Code of Good Labelling Practice for Pet Food (October 2019), FEDIAF
- Pet Food Labelling – A Guide for Customers, FEDIAF
This guide is general information, not veterinary advice. Spotted an error? Tell us.