The new buzz word of pet food is…’clean’. “Clean label” and “Clean food”. Beware of the buzz.
Mars Petcare has introduced a new pet food with the trademarked tag line “Nutro. Feed Clean.” From a press release announcing the pet food: “The NUTRO. FEED CLEAN™ philosophy adapts the human clean eating trend to pets with pet food recipes that are simple, purposeful and trustworthy and made with real, recognizable, non-GMO ingredients as close to their native form as possible.”
What does ‘clean’ mean? Mars Petcare defines it as “incorporating whole fruits and vegetables, recognizable ingredients and products with short/simple ingredient lists into a diet and avoiding artificial flavors, colors and preservatives.”
Does Mars Petcare ‘feed clean’ pet food follow it’s own definition of clean?
Mars Petcare ‘feed clean’ pet food is called “Wholesome Essentials”. These pet foods are feed grade – they are not a human grade or food grade pet food. Being feed grade means the ingredients can be sourced from inferior quality – such as USDA condemned animal material. Would you consider USDA condemned animal material ‘clean’? Mars Petcare also incorporates another buzz word into a Wholesome Essentials pet food name – ‘Farm-Raised Chicken, Brown Rice and Sweet Potato Recipe’. “Farm Raised” is buzz that has no official meaning. USDA condemned chicken can be ‘farm raised’ (and it could be factory farm raised where birds have little to no quality of life and fed recycled waste feed).
Another buzz of ‘clean’ in pet food comes from a non-profit group called the “Clean Label Project“. The Clean Label Project website states the organization rates products using “data and science to reveal the true contents of America’s best-selling consumer products.”
‘Clean’ from this website we can assume means free of toxins such as heavy metals, BPA and pesticides. Clean Label Project provides the results of testing on more than 900 pet foods and rates them according to results. But the Clean Label Project takes no consideration of pet food ingredient definitions and regulations into their ratings. Such as Beneful Dog Food…
The Clean Label Project provides Purina Beneful with its highest rating – five stars.
As well, this same dog food is rated high in “Purity” and “Product Value”…
On the Clean Label Project Beneful review page it states “Other sites perform label reviews to assess product quality. With the help of Ellipse Analytics, an independent analytical testing lab, Clean Label Project rates products based on laboratory tests for more than 75 environmental and industrial toxins such as toxic metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel), antibiotic-residues, 60+ pesticide residues, BPA/BPS, melamine, mycotoxins, and acrylamides.”
But shouldn’t ingredients be considered too? A look at the ingredients of Beneful Originals with Real Beef we find the food contains – (and ‘real’ – “with Real Beef” – is another buzz word. Real has no legal meaning.)…
- includes 7 grain ingredients (of 16 food ingredients)
- includes chicken by-product meal which is allowed per ingredient legal definition to be sourced from dead/non-slaughtered chicken carcasses (DOA birds)
- includes poultry by-product meal – same as above
- includes poultry and pork digest which is allowed per ingredient legal definition to be sourced from dead/non-slaughtered poultry and pigs (DOA animals)
- contains more salt than spinach, peas and carrots
While testing is great and needed, is a pet food ‘clean’ or ‘pure’ or a ‘value’ if it contains inferior quality ingredients? Is this really helping pet food consumers?
Originally the Clean Label Project website included ratings on pet foods for ‘nutritional superiority’ – and it listed multiple brands that few educated pet food consumers would consider ‘nutritionally superior’. TruthaboutPetFood.com sent questions to the organization regarding their nutritional ratings. Two weeks later the organization responded with “We decided to remove the nutritional superiority aspect of our rating system as there are no label laws within the pet food industry.”
Unfortunately, the organization is wrong about label laws. There are many laws governing pet food labels.
Last year the pet food buzz word was ‘sustainable’, this year it’s ‘clean’. Be wary of pet food buzz words.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food
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Debi
April 26, 2017 at 2:01 pm
When these big companies come up with these adjectives to describe the crap food they produce, run away! Maybe try to make your own dogfood, simple recipes are way better then this garbage no matter how they may skew it., plus it is pretty easy.
Sherrie Ashenbremer
April 26, 2017 at 2:30 pm
You know how many people will think “feed grade” and “CLEAN” means this dog food is wonderful and healthy and will be great for their dog????
Terri Christenson Janson
April 26, 2017 at 3:04 pm
I enjoy making my dogs food. Yes it take time but they are worth my time.
JaneeS
April 26, 2017 at 3:14 pm
These buzzwords and Clean Label Project are going to be really confusing to consumers. If I hadn’t become savvy to the pet food industry’s tricks by reading your truthful articles, I may have fallen into the trap of believing that their foods were high quality and good for my dog. It seems that every time some headway is made in educating consumers, the industry already has their spin machine ready with the next marketing campaign ready to trick people.
barbara m
April 26, 2017 at 4:10 pm
Just marketing tools. Here are more:
Clean, Sustainable, Natural, Cage-free, Free-range, Grass-fed, Real,
Fresh, Organic, Energy-boosting, Healthy, Local.
There are so many gray areas regarding these words, that enforcement is nearly impossible.
Reader
April 26, 2017 at 4:17 pm
Did you write back, letting them know there are pet food label laws on the books?
If they could incorporate all the appropriate markers for evaluating PF, beginning with protein (then ingredients) approved for human consumption, it could become a helpful resource. Isn’t that the kind of tool we’d like?
Susan Thixton
April 26, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Yes – I did explain there are many regulations on labeling.
Pam
April 26, 2017 at 4:40 pm
Hmm, you said: “Clean Label Project provides the results of testing on more than 900 pet foods and rates them according to results.”
As far as I can tell (and I’ve looked all over their hokey website), they actually do not provide the results of their supposed tests. Every single product listed on their website just has a star rating, and below the star rating is the exact same generic information. There is no data or explanation whatsoever to support their rating of a product, be the rating high or low. So consumers are just supposed to blindly trust their ratings? Irony at its finest. They’re poking at the pet food industry for their lack of transparency, yet they offer no transparency with their own information.
If I am wrong, and the results of their tests are posted somewhere, then please do share where. I emailed them more than a week ago, but never received a response.
Lili
April 26, 2017 at 4:42 pm
So the clean label project is masquerading as a consumer advocacy group? Yikes, that could be hard to counter. With health-washing combined with science-for-sale, many people will be convinced Beneful is awesome.
Jan
April 26, 2017 at 5:17 pm
SERIOUSLY? Oh good grief. Stop already with the deception!
Susan Smith
April 26, 2017 at 5:46 pm
I have just been hearing this new buzzword on television in Panera’s commercials. I couldn’t imagine what they meant by “clean food”. The opposite is “dirty”. It sounds dumb. Thanks for the explanation.
Holly Rist
April 26, 2017 at 6:31 pm
I love the ‘Farm Raised’ line. That, along with a picture of a barn, i supposed to make believe that the chickens see the sun. What a joke. Isn’t all chicken ‘farm raised’? Ya, factory farm
Pacific Sun
April 26, 2017 at 7:10 pm
Out here in California they’re supposed to be “humanely” raised. I wonder if people picture these Chickens kicking back in their fluffy hayloft, surrounded by freshly groomed gravel, and an umbrella stuck in their Pina Colada!
Would assume making the decision to raise anything for slaughter (in the first place) is the first “click.” While all the rest of it, is just the means to an end (as in inevitably self-serving).
Susan Mael
April 26, 2017 at 8:30 pm
Did you get a chance to look at the new food products from Dr. Elsey’s called: “cleanprotein”?
Regina
April 26, 2017 at 9:44 pm
Nutro isn’t new, they just fiddled with the recipe and changed the packaging. Mars Corporation has had their Nutro line for a number of years, but they keep changing it every year or two. For a while it was called “Natural Choice” with “Nutro” in small letters. Then, “Nutro” was in big letters and “Natural Choice” was in small letters.
Those are just the two most recent “new and improved” products they’ve had. I can’t recall off the top of my head the iterations prior to those two. I think they are just trying so hard to compete with some of the better brands out there that they keep reformulating and repackaging their stuff. They probably start working on the new version as soon as they finish their latest one.
Nutro has several different ‘lines” of food, and all of them keep changing and getting new packaging.
I happened to be talking to someone a while ago who was so frustrated, he said he would never buy Nutro, because they change their recipes so often!
Of course, my opinion (which I’m sure is shared here) is, if you’re going to make this food that’s supposedly so “clean and healthy” why do you also make CRAP???? Mars Corporation makes so many different brands, and there are consumers out there that have NO idea that their supposedly great Nutro is made by the same folks who make Royal Canin, Pedigree, Iams, Eukanuba, Sheba, Friskies, Greenies, and of course, they own Banfield Vets, who just love taking your money to do stuff that is NOT healthy for our pets.
Oh, and they made a big splash with their dog food Nutro MAX, that is now grain-free, but their Nutro MAX for cats is still full of corn and wheat.
Also, I just went to the Mars website, and Nutro and Greenies are not listed as one of their brands on their website. But if you look up Nutro, they do acknowledge they are a subsidiary of Mars.
I check the Mars site, along with other big conglomerates who make pet foods, so that I can see what other brands I need to avoid for my OWN use. I was quite upset to learn Mars now own “Seeds of Change” brand of foods.
Sorry, I seem to have rambled a bit. I just am losing my patience with these big conglomerates that say they’re making healthy stuff, but not acknowledging that they also make crap.
Katma
April 27, 2017 at 11:25 am
**Oh, and they made a big splash with their dog food Nutro MAX, that is now grain-free, but their Nutro MAX for cats is still full of corn and wheat.**
Ironic, since it’s cats who are the obligate carnivores.
Regina
April 26, 2017 at 10:11 pm
I was just looking at the “Clean Label Project” website, and can’t help but think they are in bed with Big Pet Feed.
They give great ratings for stuff with artificial sweeteners, food coloring, BHA, propylene glycol, and of course, corn, wheat, soy, I’m too disgusted to keep looking at it.
And the fact that they only rate dog and cat “food” — just reinforces my belief that they are all just part of Big Pet Feed.
Reader
April 27, 2017 at 8:03 am
A very good “heads-up” … thank you for the research!
Victoria
April 26, 2018 at 11:56 pm
I was looking at the Clean Label Project site for something unrelated to pet food and I found the exact same thing: Products with artificial and similar ingredients that I knew were garbage were given 5 star ratings. Organic products? 1 star. Who do they think they’re fooling and who’s paying them to fail at it?
They should be ashamed at how embarrassingly void of ethics they are, pretending to be a consumer advocacy group when they’re in fact doing a disservice to the public. And they have the nerve to get defensive when people ask questions. In China they’d be executed for such gross deceit.
Shiba Inu Owner
April 27, 2017 at 11:00 am
Thank you for the article! I am currently feeding my Shiba Inu Nutro Wild Frontier, which is a rated 4 1/2 stars on dog food advisor. This is my first time feeding this brand, as I typically feed Fromm, but thought I would change for variety. Very confused now….. as Nutro Wild Frontier isn’t as “clean” as it says?
Katma
April 27, 2017 at 11:27 am
Susan,
Thank you for keeping us informed.
The large pet food industry is all about profit, profit, profit, and their food is sold with buzzwords and inflated claims [reminds me of human cosmetics, but those aren’t necessary to survival].