Wondering how to find a safe and nutritious pet food for your companion? Start here! I have created this comprehensive guide and free resources to help guide you in your research.

The WSAVA Guidelines on Selecting a Pet Food

The WSAVA Guidelines on Selecting a Pet Food were created by an international team of Veterinary Specialists in Nutrition – the WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee. The guidelines include a number of questions to ask your pet food manufacturer to determine if they follow best practice guidelines in formulating, pet food manufacturing, nutritional science and food safety. These guidelines are appropriate for ALL types of pet foods, and all manufacturer’s can and should strive to meet these guidelines – to date, it is the best, most evidence-based way to determine a pet food’s quality and food safety. The first step on your journey should be determining how your pet food (or potential pet food) manufacturer stacks up. To get a little extra direction on researching pet foods, you can read my blog on the topic here.

Step 1 – Contact the Company

Every company should have some way of contacting them, and if they don’t (or they make it difficult) – red flag. If there is an email or contact form, you can use my free email template here to ask the company the WSAVA questions, including the ability to add or subtract any optional questions as you feel are relevant to your individual situation – feel free to adapt it as you see fit. If there is only a phone number to contact the company, you can utilise this email template as a call script and take notes as you go.

Step 2 – Analyse the Information

Most decent companies will give you clear and reasonable answers – but not all. It’s important to be able to interpret the answers you are going to be told! The Pet Nutrition Alliance’s Manufacturer’s Report has a fantastic comparison table – but the problem is it only collates information from pet foods sold in the USA and Canada, so if you are based elsewhere, you’ll need to collate this information yourself based on locally available foods. But, the Full Protocol used by PNA is helpful in weighing up how closely a pet food manufacturer adheres to the WSAVA guidelines.

Step 3 – Pet’s Requirements

To help to determine your pet’s nutritional requirements, you need to consider their self-assess what nutritional needs your pet has to allow you to focus your pet food search. Once you’ve chosen a brand that meets the above guidelines, you will want to consider the following elements to determine your pet’s key nutritional factors so that you can select a diet that meets their needs:

1. the patient’s lifestage and neuter status
2. the patient’s size/weight (particularly relevant to dogs)
3. environmental conditions (housing, multi-pet households)
4. any disease, injury or sensitivities (including any risk factors/predispositions for disease)
5. the interactions of medications, supplements and nutrients (if applicable)

Some patients have food-related needs beyond specific nutrient levels. These may involve maintaining a certain urinary pH, needing a specific kibble texture for dental health, achieving a certain level of digestibility or overcoming excessive nutrient losses, or avoiding certain protein sources due to allergies.

Therefore, you should also consider these factors. Once you’ve found a diet within your preferred brand/manufacturer that addresses your pet’s individual needs listed above, you can proceed to the next step. Note: some manufacturer’s provide a nutritional advisory service and can recommend a product based on your pet’s needs, these services are free and highly recommended if you are ever unsure on which product to choose.

So I picked a diet – now what?

Now that you’ve settled on a pet food, its time to transition! Switching to a new pet food without a gradual introduction is pretty much guaranteed to result in a gastrointestinal upset – which can range anywhere from mildly softer stools all the way to bloody diarrhoea. If you can avoid it, why wouldn’t you? So, the question is often how to do this, for how long and what else to consider for the best results when starting on a new diet.

How long?

• If your pet is not particularly sensitive and has no history of GI issues, a standard 7 day transition schedule should be adequate.
• If your pet is sensitive, has a gastrointestinal condition or has previously had difficulty transitioning between diets, a 10-14 day transition period is a better idea.
• If your pet is having an allergic reaction to their current diet, and you are moving onto a hydrolyzed diet for the purposes of a food elimination trial, no transition is required. This is due to the fact that the allergen being present in the old food is triggering the condition and if you transition, you are likely prolonging their illness by continuously exposing them to the allergen.

Transition Schedule for 7 days

1. Sprinkle on new food over 100% of the old food
2. Subtract 15% of the old food, replace with 15% of the new food
3. Subtract 25% of the old food, replace with 25% of the new food
4. Subtract 50% of the old food, replace with 50% of the new food
5. Subtract 75% of the old food, replace with 75% of the new food
6. Subtract 90% of the old food, replace with 90% of the new food
7. Sprinkle the old food over 100% of the new food

*If you need to extend the transition to 10-14 days, you will need to remain on the same ratio for 2-3 days before increasing the new food/decreasing the old food. Remember – the slower the better.

If your pet develops diarrhoea during the transition period, slow down (go back to the last ‘stable’ ratio of old and new food) and consider adding probiotics to ease the transition. If the gastrointestinal upset does not resolve or improve with probiotics, the diet may not be a good fit for your pet and you may need to go back to their original diet and reevaluate.