Lawsuit Against The Farmer’s Dog Contradicts Regulations and Science 

The Farmer’s Dog was built on a simple belief: dogs deserve real food made from human-grade ingredients, prepared in accordance with human-food safety standards from start to finish, and formulated to support long-term health.

For more than a decade, that belief has guided every decision we’ve made, from recipe formulation and ingredient sourcing to cooking methods and safety testing. We’ve now served more than one billion meals built on this approach, backed by third-party testing, controlled feeding trials, and rigorous quality control procedures and  systems that have only become more rigorous over time.

A recently filed baseless lawsuit has made claims about our fresh food recipes that are contradicted by established pet food regulations and veterinary nutrition science. 

Every fresh food recipe from The Farmer’s Dog is formulated and tested by on-staff board-certified nutritionists to be complete and balanced, with healthy fats and other nutrients in proper proportions to support dogs’ health. All our recipes contain nutrient levels that meet the same trusted AAFCO and NRC standards that are used by complete and balanced dog foods across the industry. Fat is an essential nutrient with required minimums, and we have designed our foods to contain safe and beneficial ranges of healthy fats, which remain below and within the overall fat levels of products from other popular vet recommended brands.

Pancreatitis is a common and idiopathic condition, meaning a specific cause is often unknown and diagnosis can be difficult. It can have many contributors, including genetics, and there is no established diet that fully prevents pancreatitis. Statistically, any widely fed food would be expected to have some dogs with the condition. Across our feeding trials, long-term clinical research, and data from the millions of dogs we’ve fed, have not seen evidence of higher rates associated with our recipes. We have also measured more biomarkers than required in our AAFCO feeding trials, including markers associated with pancreatitis such as blood lipase and triglyceride levels, and found normal healthy markers while feeding our food. 

Great intentions mean little without operational rigor behind them. We cook our food in government inspected human-food facilities. Our ingredients are human-grade and prepared to human-food safety standards at every step. Every batch is tested for pathogens before leaving the facility. Our on-staff board-certified veterinary nutritionists oversee formulation, nutritional adequacy testing, and quality control. Most importantly, we’ve seen the results firsthand across the millions of dogs we’ve fed over the last decade. Across our AAFCO feeding trials, our own long-term feeding studies, clinical research we’ve funded, third party testing, and over a decade of real-world feeding data from millions of customers, the pattern is consistent and clear: dogs thrive on real, properly formulated food.

Dogs deserve better, and we’re working every day to raise the standard for what dog food can be: human-grade ingredients and manufacturing, stronger testing, deeper research, and more rigorous safety practices. We do what we do for the love of dogs, and always will.