The pet food landscape

To kick off her lecture at Fetch Nashville, Taylor Root, VMD, asked attendees to picture a busy Friday afternoon in their clinics. The appointments are back-to-back, patients seem to be coming into the clinic without discussing the reason for their appointment, and then you get to an appointment for Binky and Miss Adams. From previous experience, you know that Miss Adams is going to want to chat about something, even though you may not want to chat for long. However, Miss Adams asks you for your thoughts on pet food, especially the one that she is now feeding Binky. You may not want to get involved, or you may not know the right answer, but this scenario can be relatable to every clinician.

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“When you’re in practice, nutrition comes up a lot, and we kind of shut down when it does come up. I mean, there are certain people out there who love it and are really into it, but I think for most, especially general practitioners, it’s like, you know, we know we have to talk about it. We know it’s important, and we know that it’s going to come up in every conversation, but we just don’t want to have the talk that’s coming,” Root kicked off her lecture with.

Throughout the rest of her lecture, Root broke down pet food to attendees to help them be more confident when talking about the process of making pet food to help provide evaluations and recommendations to your clinic’s version of Miss Adams.

The pet food steps

According to Root, companies producing pet food tend to follow multiple phases. The first is concept, which is the brainstorming. This is where the company gets together to go over ideas and determine whether it is the second step, feasible. When moving on to whether or not it is feasible, which is when the companies assess what they came up with in the development phase to determine if their concept is possible to execute or would it really work.

“So the concept phase is really sort of like a blue sky approach. It’s like, the world is your oyster. If you could have anything, if we could make anything, what would it be? And that’s really what you want to have—like, that’s what their goal is during this phase: like, don’t ask questions, don’t challenge things. Just say, like, ‘But what if? What if we did this? What if we did that?’ The questioning and the poking holes and things is coming later, but this is the time that there’s just like all the ideas can come together,” she explained.

When evaluating the concepts, it can be useful for these companies to also rely a little bit on the trends that are happening in human health and mimic what they are doing. Sometimes the trends, like fatty acids, Root said, carry over into the animal space and companies began putting them into a lot more foods for joint support. The human food world also has bigger group sizes and things of that nature when it comes to testing products, so their research can sometimes be helpful when creating concepts for pet food.

Once working through all the feasibility questions needed to determine if the product could work, pet food companies need to determine who the food is for. Is it for puppies? Geriatric dogs? Just adult dogs? This is needed to be determined before looking into any ingredients, macronutrients, and micronutrients because according to AAFCO, each group needs different things for who they are targeting so this needs to be defined before anything else. When patients then ask you the difference, this can help explain to them why their puppy food may not have all that is needed for their adult dog and vice versa. Once all of this is established, it may not guarantee the product will work.

“Sometimes, you think it’s going to work, and on paper it’s going to work, but when you put the formula together, it doesn’t actually do it. The ingredients and the manufacturing process don’t go together. You might run a batch along the way and have to reevaluate there. We also start to learn about: What does the food look like, feel like? What does the aroma? You know, does it run consistently every time we run it? How long does it take to run? How long does it take to cook? What temperatures are we looking at, all of that? And then we go into analytical testing, which includes nutrient analysis and shelf life testing,” Root explained to attendees.

Takeaways

When it comes to talking to pet parents about pet food, it may be the last thing you want to do but it could be the most important thing they think to ask you during the appointment. Your understanding of how the pet food industry works, and what they consider when creating products, can help you better educate your clients, and get your patients the right food for them.

Reference

Root T. You Can't Judge Pet Food by the Cover. Presented at: Fetch Nashville. May 31, 2025. Nashville, Tennessee.