Understanding Where Your Pet Food Comes From

Pet owners often have specific ideals in mind when selecting food. Whether it’s budget, volume, or a specific ingredient, you’re likely to find something at your local big box store. But do you know where that pet food actually comes from? And, of equal importance, do you know what you’re getting for your money?

The pet food supply chain probably contains a lot more steps than you thought, and a company’s money is often divided in too many directions. As a result, your animal’s food suffers. How can companies afford quality ingredients when they spend most of their money on other things? Let’s take a look at your pet food’s journey from production to shelf and compare it to direct-to-consumer options!

What Goes into Your Pet’s Food?

Let’s say you purchase a bag of one of the most famous dog food brands. What can you expect to find on the label? Here are the first 10 ingredients on the list:

·      Whole Grain Corn

·      Meat And Bone Meal

·      Corn Gluten Meal

·      Beef Fat Naturally Preserved With Mixed-Tocopherols

·      Soybean Meal

·      Poultry By-Product Meal

·      Chicken

·      Egg And Chicken Flavor

·      Whole Grain Wheat

·      Animal Digest

There are a few things to note here. First of all, the very first ingredient is corn, and it shows up again as ingredient number three. Remember that on a nutrition label, ingredients are listed in order by weight, so that means your pet is eating a lot of corn.

Second, what sorts of animal products are in this food? “Meat?” What kind? What about poultry by-product? Egg and chicken “flavor?” Why couldn’t they just increase the amount of actual chicken?

This is a fairly standard kibble breakdown from a brand that touts quality. But is quality actually what you’re paying for? As it turns out, most of a commercial brand’s money is going to other things, like marketing, which leaves very little room in the budget for high-quality ingredients. And that’s a scary thought!

A Case Study: Big-Name Pet Food Brands

A large brand might have a big budget, but they also have big costs. Some of the country’s most ubiquitous dog food brands are owned by companies such as Nestle and General Mills. Suppose you’re looking at the financials of one of them as their pet food goes through the manufacturing process. Here’s what you can expect.

Packaging

The first step once a brand has its food recipe ready to go is putting it in a bag! Thankfully, this part is fairly standard. Most companies will pay about $1.50 for the bag that the food is stored in.

Labor

Plenty of people are involved in creating dog food. From the staff who monitor the actual mixing process to those sourcing the ingredients, handling deliveries, quality controlling the packaging, and more, the company needs to pay many teams. Per six-pound bag of dog food, this averages out to about $3 for everybody.

Marketing

Here’s the big retailer push: advertising. All of the investment in the food so far is worthless if no one buys it, and statistics show that companies invest an average of around 10% of their entire budget on advertising. However, in the pet food sector, because companies need to run ads for both consumers and stores (to get them to stock the product), this number is higher: closer to 25%.

Procter & Gamble, owner of one of the largest pet food names, spends about $8 billion each year on advertising. This part of the process makes up the greatest share of that six-pound dog food bag’s cost: in this case, about $8.

Import & middlemen

In some cases, brands need to bring ingredients or materials from outside the country, or they need to work with a liaison to get their products into stores. You could be getting animal products that have been dehydrated for weeks as they make the trek from the other side of the world (and from a team whose quality control you can’t supervise). These teams also need to be paid for their time, which accounts for around $2 of the budget.

The base ingredients

At this point, you know the rough costs that many of the nation’s top brands face when creating a six-pound bag of dog food. Great! Given that the in-store cost of the bag under examination is $20.68, you can probably already see that there’s a problem: we haven’t talked about the actual ingredients, and the company still needs to make money. With just $5.18 left and a generously low profit margin of just $2 per bag, the brand is left with a bit more than $3 for all the ingredients in the food.

How can the company maximize its return on investment? By cutting down on the ingredients that are most expensive and bulking up the kibble with cheaper items. That means more rice and corn and less protein. When that protein is used, it’s often the cast-offs, which are less costly than premium parts. That’s why you see ingredients like binders.

The Direct-to-Consumer Pipeline and Why It Matters

So you’re paying $20.68 for a bag of dog food that has $3 worth of ingredients (and the ingredient quality that $3 can buy). Your money isn’t going very far to keep your pet healthy, happy, and well-fed!

That’s why the direct-to-consumer pipeline is so valuable. When companies cut out the middlemen (processing plants, brick and mortar stores, etc.) and manage their own small operations, they have much more budget to allocate to the ingredients that matter. This means:

·      Less filler – Your pet food comes without the cheap stuff and is filled with valuable items, like whole prey, instead

·      Higher-quality ingredients – The animal products inside the food aren’t just cast-offs; they’re prime pieces, like the heart, liver, and bones

·      Reduced quality control issues – Small direct-to-consumer businesses have a hand in every batch they make, which means there are many fewer opportunities for contamination or poor quality control

·      Fresher ingredients – You won’t pick up your bag of pet food after it’s been sitting on a shelf for who knows how long. The product is shipped fresh directly to you, which helps to preserve nutrients (and flavor, which your furry friend will appreciate)

In the end, commercial pet food might be just a trip down the street, but your money isn’t getting you the quality your animal needs for a thriving, exciting life. Consider how a direct-to-consumer business can provide food of much higher quality at a comparable price!