How to Read a Pet Food Label in the UK

Pet food packaging is designed to sell, but the part that actually tells you what's inside sits in small print on the back. Once you know where to look and what the wording legally means, you can compare two bags in about thirty seconds and stop paying for clever marketing. Here's how to read a UK pet food label properly.

Start with the statutory statement

Every pet food sold in the UK carries a block of small print called the statutory statement. It's the legally required information, and it's where the honest facts live — not on the glossy front. Find it (usually on the back or side) and you'll see the composition, the analytical constituents, additives, feeding guide, net weight, a best-before date, a batch number and the name and address of the responsible company.

Under retained EU Regulation 767/2009, everything on the label must be truthful and not misleading. So while the front of the pack can show a farmhouse and a happy dog, the statutory statement has to be accurate. Read that first and you skip most of the spin.

Complete or complementary — the most important two words

The single most useful thing on any label is whether the food is complete or complementary.

• Complete means it contains every nutrient your pet needs, in the right amounts, when fed as directed. You can feed it as the only food.
• Complementary means it does *not* provide balanced nutrition on its own and is meant to be fed alongside something else. Most treats, toppers, mixers and some raw products are complementary.

PDSA vets recommend feeding a good-quality complete food as the basis of your dog or cat's diet, precisely because it removes the guesswork of balancing nutrients yourself. This is easy to get wrong: a bowl of "complementary" wet food fed as a full meal, day after day, can leave a pet short of essential nutrients over time. If a product is going to be the main meal, the word you want to see is complete.

One more phrase to look for is the life stage — puppy/kitten (growth), adult (maintenance), or senior. A food that's "complete for adult dogs" isn't formulated for a growing puppy, and vice versa. Match the food to the animal in front of you.

The composition (ingredients) list, decoded

The composition is the ingredients list, and it must run in descending order by weight. The ingredient present in the largest amount comes first. There's a catch worth knowing: the weight is measured as the ingredient goes into the mix, before cooking. Fresh meat is roughly 70% water, so a "fresh chicken" listed first can drop down the running order once that water cooks off — which is why a dried meat meal lower down the list may actually contribute more protein to the finished food.

Manufacturers are allowed to declare ingredients in one of two ways, and by law they cannot mix the two styles in the same list:

• Individual (open) declaration — specific names like "chicken, brown rice, salmon oil". This gives you the most detail.
• Category names — grouped terms defined in the regulations, such as meat and animal derivatives, cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, oils and fats, and minerals.

What "meat and animal derivatives" really means

This category name has a bad reputation it doesn't fully deserve. It refers to parts of the animal not usually eaten by people in the UK — organs like liver, lung and heart — which are often genuinely nutritious. The honest downside is vagueness: a category name doesn't tell you *which* animal or *which* parts, and it lets a manufacturer change the exact source between batches depending on cost. It isn't automatically low quality, but an open declaration tells you more. If you want to know exactly what your pet is eating, favour foods that name their ingredients individually.

Tip: watch for "ingredient splitting". If a food lists "rice, maize, rice flour, maize gluten" separately, those cereal fractions might together outweigh the meat at the top — they're just split so no single one tops the list.

The naming rules: how much meat is actually in there

Here's where the front-of-pack wording is quietly precise. Under the FEDIAF Code of Good Labelling Practice (which UK manufacturers follow), if a food draws attention to an ingredient — in words or pictures — the percentage must be declared, and the phrasing tells you the minimum amount:

| Wording on the pack | Minimum amount of that ingredient | |---|---| | "Chicken flavour" / "flavoured with chicken" | Less than 4% (just enough to taste) | | "With chicken" / "contains chicken" | At least 4% | | "Rich in chicken" / "high in chicken" | At least 14% | | Named after it — "Chicken Dinner", "Chicken" | At least 26% |

So a tin proudly labelled "with chicken" can legally be just 4% chicken. "Chicken flavour" may contain almost none. This one table quietly explains why two foods with near-identical front labels can be wildly different products — and different prices.

Analytical constituents: the numbers that let you compare

The analytical constituents (sometimes shown as "typical analysis") are the percentages that let you compare foods objectively. UK labels must declare:

• Crude protein — total protein content.
• Crude oils and fats — total fat.
• Crude fibre — indigestible plant matter.
• Crude ash (also called inorganic matter or incinerated residue) — the mineral content.
• Moisture — only has to be declared when it's above 14%, which is why you'll see it on wet foods but often not on dry.

Don't be alarmed by ash. It's simply what's left if you burned the food completely — the minerals like calcium and phosphorus. A figure around 5–10% is normal; it isn't filler or a quality problem.

The mistake almost everyone makes: comparing wet and dry directly

This is the biggest information gap on most labels, and where competitors' guides stop short. You cannot compare a wet food's 10% protein against a dry food's 25% protein straight off the pack, because they contain wildly different amounts of water. To compare fairly, convert both to a dry matter basis — strip the water out of the maths:

Dry matter protein = protein % ÷ (100 − moisture %) × 100

Worked example:

• Dry food: 25% protein, 8% moisture → 25 ÷ 92 × 100 = 27% protein on a dry matter basis
• Wet food: 10% protein, 78% moisture → 10 ÷ 22 × 100 = 45% protein on a dry matter basis

The wet food, which looked far lower on the tin, is actually the more protein-dense once you remove the water. Do this calculation whenever you're weighing up two foods in different formats — it's the single most useful trick on this page.

Additives, feeding guides and the rest

Additives cover things like added vitamins, minerals, preservatives, antioxidants and colours. Added vitamins A and D must be declared because they have legal maximum levels. "No artificial colours or preservatives" is a fair thing to look for if it matters to you, though a preservative is what stops fats going rancid — a natural antioxidant such as tocopherols (vitamin E) does the same job.

The feeding guide is a starting point, not gospel. It's based on averages, so use it as a first estimate and then adjust to your own pet's body condition and weight. If your dog is gaining weight on the recommended amount, feed less. Weighing kibble on kitchen scales is far more accurate than a scoop or cup. For breeds that pile on weight easily, our guide to feeding a Labrador and avoiding obesity walks through portioning in more detail.

Finally, check the best-before date (month and year), the batch number (needed if there's ever a recall) and the company name and address. A traceable, contactable manufacturer is a good sign.

How UK pet food is actually regulated

Pet food isn't a free-for-all — it's regulated feed, overseen in the UK by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and enforced locally by Trading Standards. The main rules to know:

• Retained Regulation (EC) No 767/2009 governs the marketing, labelling and composition of pet food. It's the reason labels must carry the statutory statement and must not mislead.
• Regulation (EC) No 1069/2009 covers animal by-products (ABP) — the material of animal origin used in pet food that isn't destined for human consumption — and how it must be handled.
• FEDIAF nutritional guidelines set the science-based nutrient levels that "complete" foods are formulated to meet.
• UK Pet Food (the trade body formerly known as the PFMA) runs a members' code that goes beyond the legal minimum. PDSA specifically suggests looking for foods from UK Pet Food members, whose products are guaranteed to meet nutritional needs and meet extra quality standards.

Worth knowing: unlike human food, terms such as "premium", "natural", "holistic", "grain-free" and "hypoallergenic" have no strict legal definition for pet food in the UK. They're marketing words, not guarantees. "Complete", "complementary" and the meat-percentage naming rules, on the other hand, are legally meaningful — so put your trust in those.

Common label myths, cleared up

• "By-products and derivatives are rubbish." Not necessarily — organ meats are nutrient-rich. The real issue is vagueness, not quality.
• "Grain-free is healthier." There's no legal or blanket nutritional basis for this; some dogs do well on grains. Choose based on your pet, not the buzzword. If your dog has a diagnosed sensitivity, see our guide to hypoallergenic dog food.
• "Complete means high quality." Complete means nutritionally balanced, not premium. A budget complete food and a luxury complete food both, by law, meet the same nutrient baseline.
• "The first ingredient is the biggest, so meat-first is best." Only true before cooking. Remember the fresh-meat water trick above.

Your 30-second label checklist

1. Does it say complete (for a main meal) or complementary (a treat/topper)? 2. Is it for the right life stage — puppy/kitten, adult or senior? 3. Is the composition an open declaration (named ingredients) or vague category names? 4. What do the naming rules tell you — is it "with" (4%), "rich in" (14%) or named-after (26%)? 5. Compare the analytical constituents — on a dry matter basis if the formats differ. 6. Any added vitamins/antioxidants, and is the ash figure normal (~5–10%)? 7. Is there a best-before date, batch number and a contactable company?

Run that list and you'll buy on facts, not packaging. For choosing the right diet as your dog gets older, read our guide to feeding a senior dog, and if you keep more than one cat, multi-cat feeding solutions covers the label-reading that keeps each cat on the right food.

Sources

• UK Pet Food – Labelling code of practice
• UK Pet Food – Understanding pet food labels factsheet
• UK Pet Food – Key pet food regulations (governance of manufacturing)
• FEDIAF – Understanding pet food labels
• Food Standards Agency / GOV.UK – Pet food regulation
• PDSA – Your dog's diet
• Vet Help Direct – How to read a pet food label