Ever wondered why your pet's food seems to cost an arm and a leg? Unravel the mystery behind the high price tags on pet food, exploring factors from ingredient quality to manufacturing processes, and understand the true value of your pet's meals.
During the pandemic, a whopping 23 million American households adopted a dog or cat
and the prices are rising, too.
- Foods, treats, and chews can cost owners hundreds of dollars a month, even though they’re often made with “byproducts” of the meat and poultry industry
- These costs are hitting more people than ever before.
Should you buy the more expensive pet food?
Expensive does not necessarily mean better
- Shari White, Petco’s senior vice president of merchandising, told me that she would love to see more research on health outcomes
- Popular diets for dogs like “grain-free,” which tend to be pricier, may not be better either
- There’s also not much evidence that feeding table scraps to your pup on occasion is a bad idea
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Kibble is surprisingly complex
Like infant formula, kibble needs to have the right combination of fat, protein, fiber, and nutrients to keep a pet healthy, even if it eats nothing else
- It also needs to last for weeks or months without rotting, which requires additional ingredients
- The goal is to make kibble that’s just gamey enough to make animals love it but not so bad that people won’t buy it
- Companies run sniff tests with pets to find the most palatable kibble
Pet food companies also charge a lot because… they can
The pet food industry is built on branding
- If you put peanut butter in a tube and call it “Kong Stuff’n,” you can sell it for more than a jar of Jif
- Marketing obscures the fact that there are just a handful of major corporations behind the majority of food brands
- A lack of competition within an industry can be bad for the consumer and bad for prices
