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Canned Dog Food

An Inside Look at How Canned Dog Food is Made

I've always wondered how wet dog food gets made – but it took a long time to find out. It seems like it's more difficult for a journalist to get into a pet food cannery than into a factory that builds spy planes. So when Whole Dog Journal is asked to take a tour of a dog food manufacturing plant we jump at the opportunity. This article details how canned dog food is made at one plant. From the initial ingredient preparations, to the canning and cooking process and the QC and testing procedures along the way, this article captures it all. Included in this web-only feature are detailed photos taken by Whole Dog Journal during the plant tour. Be sure to click on each image to enlarge it.

The Benefits of Canned Dog Food: WDJ’s Canned Dog Foods 2013

Wet dog food, a.k.a. “canned” dog food, is not nearly as popular as dry food. The total sales figure for dry pet food in the U.S. last year (more than $12.7 billion) was more than 21/2 times that of wet pet food (almost $4.8 billion). I understand the reasons for this, but wish it wasn’t so. Canned food is actually a much healthier diet for dogs than kibble.

WDJ’s Approved Canned Dog Foods List of 2017

Lotus is another company we love. They make only a few foods, but with ingredients they source close to the cannery they built and operate themselves. They invited us to come and watch them make canned food and allowed us to take as many photos as we liked, of anything we saw. We love transparency!

Whole Dog Journal’s Canned Dog Food Selection Criteria

A whole, named animal protein in one of the first two positions on the ingredients list. Whole" means no byproducts. "Named" means a specific animal species – chicken

2016 Canned Dog Food Review

but may also stock lower-quality

Whole Dog Journal’s 2012 Canned Dog Food Review

Recently, a neighbor asked me for advice about her dog, who was vomiting and subdued. As part of our discussion about the dog's upset stomach, I asked what kind of dog food she fed to the dog. She responded that she fed him high-quality wet food, not the cheap stuff."

While the price of a pet product shouldn't ever be considered the sole indicator of a top quality dog food

2015 Approved Canned Dog Foods: Whole Dog Journal’s Annual Ratings

How many of you feed canned food to your dog every day? Or maybe I should ask, how many of you feed only canned food to your dog every day? While we'd like our annual canned dog food review to be of use to owners who feed any amount of canned food to their dogs, it should be most relevant to people who rely solely on canned products to provide complete and balanced nutrition" to their dogs

2014 Canned Dog Food Review

How do you choose a canned food for your dog? It probably depends on why you want to feed him a wet food – and it may even depend on how big he is or how old he is. Are you trying to build or rebuild a dog's health or help a starved dog gain weight? Tempt the appetite of a sick, depressed, (or just fussy) dog? Prevent further health problems in a dog with diabetes or kidney disease? Does your dog weight two pounds, 20 pounds, or 120 pounds? Is she two months old, two years old, or 20 years old? The answers you give will undoubtedly affect your choice, because top-quality canned dog food is extremely expensive.

Behind Our Ratings: Whole Dog Journal’s 2015 Approved Canned Dog Foods

When we review dog foods, we generally ask the makers of those that meet our selection criteria some questions. This year, we asked this: Do you have a complete nutrient analysis for each of your products? And if so

WDJ’s 2016 Approved Gold Star Canned Dog Foods

The following pet food companies not only offer wet dog foods that meet our ingredient selection criteria, but also provided Whole Dog Journal with independent, third-party laboratory nutritional analyses of their dog foods – analyses confirming that their canned dog foods are not just formulated to meet

Whole Dog Journal’s 2013 Canned Dog Food Review

Price is the most commonly cited reason that people prefer to feed dry food to their dogs; canned food is far more expensive to feed than dry food. Owners of large dogs or multiple dogs rarely feed canned food as anything other than an occasional treat, for this reason alone.Of course, there are other objections, too.

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