Natural Dog Food

As people have become more aware and increasingly concerned about the chemicals in our food and environment, many dog owners have become concerned about the type and quantify of chemicals in dog food. This has led to a growing demand for chemical-free dog food, known as Natural Dog Food.

For many years, the term 'natural dog food' has not been defined. As a result, it has meant different things to different people. For example, some people believe that 'natural' means 'organic', others that 'natural' refers to a diet similar to what a dog living wild would eat. However, these are incorrect interpretations as the word 'natural' in 'natural dog food' is now generally used to mean 'chemical free'.

To help avoid confusion, in 2001 the AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials) released suggested guidelines for use of the term 'natural'  for pet foods.  In effect, it defines 'natural' as meaning that there are no chemicals added, with the exception of synthetic vitamin and mineral additives (an exception was made for these on the basis of their nutritional contribution). The official definition is:

A feed or ingredient derived solely from plant, animal or mined sources, either in its unprocessed state or having been subjected to physical processing, heat processing, rendering, purification extraction, hydrolysis, enzymolysis or fermentation, but not having been produced by or subject to a chemically synthetic process and not containing an additives or processing aids that are chemically synthetic except in amounts as might occur unavoidably in good manufacturing practives.

However, these guidelines are only suggested, rather than being enforced. Consequently, it is worth checking the ingredients list to confirm that there are in fact no chemicals added.

It should be noted that the definition of natural dog food is around what it does not contain, rather than what it does contain. In other words, 'natural dog food' offers the benefit of not containing chemical additives, but is not in itself an indication of the use of quality ingredients. It is quite possible for a food to be 'natural' and still use inferior quality of ingredients. Having said this, natural dog foods do tend to use higher quality ingredients than normal dog foods, for two reasons:

• They are marketed to people who are particularly concerned about the quality of their dog food, so in order to be successful they generally need to be seen to offer good quality ingredients in addition to being natural.
• The avoidance of artificial preservatives, colourings and flavour enhancers mean that low quality ingredients are more likely to spoil or be rejected by their human/dog clients. To avoid this, higher quality ingredients tend to be required.