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 turned 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, 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 read without specialist knowledge.

Three things conspire against you as a consumer:

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

2. Vague terms. Phrases like "meat and animal by-products", "animal fats", "meat derivatives" are legally allowed and tell you nothing. The fat could be from chickens, cows, pigs, road kill, or rendered restaurant grease. The regulation does not require species disclosure for by-products.

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. Mars Pedigree, Whiskas, Friskies, Felix, Cesar, Beneful, Bakers all do this. 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.

It worked. Within two years, brands started reformulating products to climb from D to C, from C to B. Sales of A and B products grew. Consumers were not asked to become nutritionists. They were given a tool to compare twelve identical-looking bags in three seconds.

Pet food never got its Nutri-Score. The industry blocked it. Every major brand we contacted before launching PetFoodRate either refused to discuss objective grading or actively lobbied against it. The reason is obvious: when you grade a 4-percent-meat kibble next to a 60-percent-meat kibble on the same scale, the 4-percent product cannot win.

What PetFoodRate does

We built PetFoodRate to fill the gap. Every product in our database is graded A to E, on a 100-point scale, based on five public sub-scores:

• Protein quality (35 percent of the final score). Named animal proteins in top positions beats vague by-products. Fresh meat beats meal. Single-source beats undisclosed mixes.
• Nutritional balance (20 percent). Crude protein, fat, fibre, ash, moisture compared against species-specific reference ranges. Calcium-to-phosphorus ratio for skeletal health. Omega-3 to omega-6 ratio for inflammation.
• Absence of undesirables (20 percent). BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin, propylene glycol, food colorants, added sugars, caramel — all disqualifying. We deduct points for each.
• Label transparency (15 percent). Vague terms cost points. Specific species, specific percentages, specific source countries earn points.
• Species adaptability (10 percent). Cat food has to respect that cats are obligate carnivores. Dog food has to scale protein for activity level. Rabbit food has to be hay-based. We grade against the species, not the marketing.

The methodology is published in full at /methodology. Every product page shows you exactly which sub-scores drove the final letter. There is no black box.

What we are not

We are not a vet. We are not a lab. We do not certify products or sell certifications. We do not accept payment from brands. We do not run paid promotions. We do not have brand partnerships.

We make money two ways: display advertising (when audience is large enough to support it) and affiliate links to retailers like Amazon, Chewy, Zooplus when readers click through to buy a product. The affiliate link does not change the rating. A grade-A product earns the same affiliate commission as a grade-E product if you click and buy. The commission has zero influence on the rating because the rating is generated from public composition data before any commercial decision is made.

If you find a product where the affiliate link contradicts the grade, it is not because we are corrupted. It is because we choose to link to alternatives even on grade D and E pages so readers who insist on buying that product still get a working price.

Who we are

PetFoodRate is published by an editorial team of four pen names: Clara Bell, Max Kowalski, Sophie Lefevre, and Theo Blanchard. We use pen names because the team is small and we want a consistent editorial voice rather than four different ones. The legal entity behind the site is disclosed at /about along with the contact email. Each author page explains the disclosure.

I write the editorial pieces. Max digs into the ingredient research and audits the encyclopedia. Sophie covers species-specific nutrition. Theo analyses the brand strategies and the consumer market.

The next twelve months

We are launching with 123 products graded across 38 brands. Our target for the end of 2026 is 1000 products and 100 brands across 10 species. We will publish weekly editorial pieces, deep-dive comparisons, 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 a reader finds an error, we credit the correction in the article.

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

A small ask

Pet food is the third largest household expense for owners after rent and human food. It is also the food you feed something that cannot read the label, cannot complain, cannot switch brands on its own, and will eat the same bag for months until you decide to change.

If we save one bag of unidentified by-products from one bowl, this whole project pays for itself.

Welcome to PetFoodRate.

— Clara Bell, Editorial Lead, PetFoodRate