How we grade dog food

Tier 1: Safety & adequacy 45 points

The biggest tier, because it answers the most basic question: is this food appropriate for a dog at all.

• 25 points — the product's AAFCO nutritional adequacy statement matches your dog's life stage (growth, adult maintenance, or all life stages). A food labeled only for adult maintenance is not appropriate for a growing puppy, regardless of anything else on the label; this alone can cap or gate the grade.
• 8 points — the manufacturer proved the formula through AAFCO feeding trials (dogs actually ate it and were monitored), vs 4 points for formulation only (the recipe was calculated to meet a nutrient chart but never fed to a dog in a trial). Feeding trials are the stronger standard.
• Up to 12 points — recall history at the manufacturer level over the last 10 years. Every recall event costs points, weighted by how recent it was (an event in the last three years counts at full weight, one from nine years ago at a fraction) and how serious it was (a labeling or packaging issue costs less than a product defect; a recall with confirmed illness costs the most). A manufacturer with recent, serious recalls can lose this entire block; one with a clean recent decade earns most of it back. We weight it this way because a flat count can't tell a company that fixed its problems nine years ago from one that shipped a confirmed-toxicity failure three years ago.

Tier 2: Manufacturer credibility 20 points

Not on any label. This is researched, sourced data about the company behind the brand, following the WSAVA (World Small Animal Veterinary Association) global nutrition guidelines for what a credible manufacturer discloses.

• Up to 8 points — nutritionist credentialing: 8 for a qualified nutritionist on staff (PhD in animal nutrition, or a board-certified veterinary nutritionist), 6 for a qualified consulting nutritionist (real credentialing, just not a full-time in-house hire), 0 for none.
• Up to 7 points — independently documented quality control: third-party audit, GFSI/USDA facility certification, or a published testing protocol. This is scored on documentation, not on who owns the building. A brand that co-manufactures at an audited, well-run facility scores the same as one that owns its own plant; owning a factory is a capital fact, not a quality fact. A manufacturer's self-reported, uncorroborated QC claims score as unverified, not as confirmed.
• Up to 5 points — publishes nutrition research (peer-reviewed, not just marketing copy).

A note on what these signals really measure. All three correlate with a company's size and R&D budget: a large manufacturer can afford an in-house PhD, its own peer-reviewed research program, and a facility it owns outright; a small, newer maker often can't, regardless of how good its formula is. We still weight these signals heavily because the alternative, rating pet food purely on its ingredient list, has a worse track record: it's how several boutique "premium" brands ended up near the top of ingredient-only raters while also being among the most-named brands in the FDA's canine heart-disease inquiry. Company infrastructure has turned out to predict safety better than ingredient romanticism. That said, we try not to let this collapse into "big company good, small company bad": the consulting-nutritionist credit and the documented-QC path exist specifically so a smaller, well-run maker has a real way to score well without needing big-company scale, and any WSAVA field we simply haven't been able to verify scores at half credit, not zero, not the same as a confirmed "no" (see confidence badges, below). A co-packer's QC and recall problems belong to every brand it makes; if your bag doesn't say who actually manufactures it, we resolve that ourselves at the manufacturer level.

Tier 3: Nutrition 20 points

Three parts: protein quantity (up to 8), protein source quality (up to 8), and fat/fiber sanity (up to 4). Quantity comes from the Guaranteed Analysis, normalized to a dry-matter basis so foods with different moisture content can be compared fairly.

Source quality exists because the protein number on a label is not a meat meter. We score named animal protein above plant protein concentrate, because animal protein carries a more complete essential-amino-acid profile and higher digestibility for dogs. Concretely, from the top of the ingredient list:

• In kibble, a named animal meal ranked high (chicken meal, salmon meal) earns the most. Meals are dehydrated before weighing, so their position on the list is honest. Fresh named meat as the first ingredient earns partial credit: it's weighed before cooking at roughly 70% water, so "real chicken is the #1 ingredient" can be true on the scale and thin in the finished kibble. A food with both earns full marks.
• In fresh, raw, and wet food, a named meat leading the recipe earns full credit on its own. There's no meal because there's no extrusion: the water goes into the bowl rather than being cooked off, and our dry-matter conversion already accounts for it. Applying the kibble discount here would penalize the same water twice.
• Plant protein concentrates ranked high (pea protein, corn gluten meal, soybean meal) cost points in every format, because they inflate the protein number without the animal protein buyers think they're paying for.
• Whole grains and whole legumes are never scored, up or down. This tier takes no position on grain-free (see below); it takes a position on where the protein comes from.

Tier 4: Ingredient preferences 15 points

Deliberately the smallest tier and labeled as precaution, not proven harm: artificial colors, BHA/BHT preservatives, and anonymous protein sources ("meat meal" with no named animal) cost points here. None of these are proven to harm dogs; we dock them because a transparent, identifiable ingredient list is a reasonable thing to prefer, not because the ingredient is dangerous.