Functional pet food drivers: Health, Nutrition, Science

A new study shows half of North American pet owners surveyed are willing to pay more for pet foods with functional benefits, with the key to their willingness lying in a keen interest in long term health and nutrition.

 While this is nothing new for the pet food market, it reinforces the ongoing strength of the health and wellness trend and corroborates other survey findings, including ones revealing a growing preference for science-backed ingredients and claims.  The survey surveyed more than 1,800 dog and cat owners in the U.S. and Canada. It showed 85% agreeing that high-quality pet foods can effectively serve as preventive health care for their pets, and nearly 80% believing science-backed ingredients are key to providing the best benefits.  The survey also indicated accurately that 78% of U.S. dog owners  consider pet food as most important to their pets’ health. 

Certain key features that pet owners in the survey indicated to be very important to their pets health were “no additives/preservatives” claims, along with with “high source of protein,”  with “natural/no artificial ingredients,” 20% with “digestive health” and with “immune health” claims in marketing materials, websites or packaging.  With these being more mainstream,  other claims that seemed to be on the rise in use were  “joint health,” “brain health” and “bone health”.

All these claims, mainstream and emerging, appear often on human food products, too. And, just as respondents to the survey consider long-term health a key driver behind the importance of functional benefits for themselves as humans.  With that being said it seems that pet owners in general are starting to not only talk about but put some of how they care for their pets into action.  When I founded Canine Health Forward in 2016 we not only launched our preventative health features into action by bringing them to the pet market via our line of products but took those key long term preventative  health benefits to each and every dog that we touched almost a full decade before People were talking about it.  Thus truly defining, Canine Health Forward.