2024 Pet Food Trends.

Pet food is a $151 billion industry, with vast resources spent on working out how best to nourish and delight our beloved charges.

Most pets once got by on little more than table scraps, and whatever extra they could hunt or scavenge. Today, things are different. The love humans have for their pets, combined with capitalism’s eagerness to exploit our every desire and anxiety, means pets can now eat better than their owners do.

One of the world centres for pet food innovation is located on the site of an old horse farm, deep in the rolling green fields of the Midlands. The Waltham Petcare Science Institute in Melton Mowbray is the science arm of Mars Petcare, a leading company in
the pet food industry. The research that takes place there determines the future products of dozens of pet food brands: Iams, Cesar, Whiskas, Sheba, James Wellbeloved, Pedigree, Eukanuba and more.

About a third of the staff at Waltham work in its research labs. The other two-thirds are dedicated to feeding, training, exercising and maintaining the living spaces of the real stars of the show: the 200 dogs and 200 cats that live at Waltham and test the products developed there. The 200 dogs belong to four different breeds, chosen to represent different canine sizes: labradors for big dogs, beagles for medium, and
norfolk terriers and petit basset griffon vendéens for small dogs. Almost all the cats on site are domestic shorthairs, but the odd longhair can also be found.

When Waltham opened its first nutritional facility in the UK in 1960, the commercial pet food industry was about 100 years old.

Before the mid-19th century, household pets survived mostly on table scraps, while working animals received heartier fare. For the fluffy white toy dogs who acted as status symbols for the rich, the 16th-century French court employed a "boulanger des petits chiens blancs" - a baker whose job was specifically baking bread for these pooches.

Then came James Spratt. An American electrician and lightning-rod salesman in England, he was horrified to see poor dogs at the docks surviving on the sailors' leftover hardtack - the dense, tasteless biscuits taken on long sea voyages specifically for their durability.

In the early 1860s, he launched the patented Spratt's Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes - a mixture of wheat meal, vegetables, beetroot and beef blood - thus inventing the commercial pet food industry.

From the beginning, Spratt advertised his meat fibrin cakes as the food of show dogs - animals with sleek coats, in peak health and form. The association was already there: your dog will be the best because of what it eats.

Following Spratt's success, others began their own ventures into pet food, which they marketed to the growing middle class. In 1922, Ken-L Ration introduced canned dog food in the US, largely made of horse meat.

Canned pet food became the norm until the rationing of tin during the second world war forced the industry to look for alternatives. The result was dry pet food, which had a longer shelf life and could be left out in bowls overnight.

In 1956, Purina reformulated its core brand Dog Chow as a dry kibble, the first of its kind. Kibble has dominated the industry ever since.

Waltham opened at a time when veterinarians in the UK were seeing a lot of dogs and cats with vitamin D deficiencies and rickets. The centre has always focused on nutrition, and it was at Waltham that scientists made a number of discoveries that have shaped the composition of pet food throughout the world.

Waltham researchers demonstrated, in 1997, the prebiotic digestion benefits of the nutrient-dense fibre. All cat food now includes taurine, an amino acid critical for heart function, vision and digestion that cats cannot produce naturally - and it was at Waltham, in the 1980s, that researchers determined the levels required in dry and wet food. This research extends beyond mere nutrition.

In the 1990s, Mars scientists developed the first nutritional supplement to make dog farts less odorous. And today, a major part of the research at Waltham is about how to make healthy food actually taste good to pets.

Protein is at the heart of the pet food industry. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning that they must have meat, and though dogs have evolved into omnivore scavengers, they also require protein-rich diets. But for the products that dominate the industry, no animal is actually slaughtered solely for pet food.

Cooked and processed organ meat and bones, all of which still retains nutritional value for the pet, are the main components of pet food. But there are those who say our pets deserve better than our leftovers. These are the raw food evangelists: owners and pet companies who argue that we should go back to feeding dogs and cats what they ate in the wild - chiefly a mix of raw meat and bone. Raw food fans denounce kibble as junk food and equate it to eating McDonald's every day.

Many owners claim that switching their pets to raw food has given them more energy, made their coats shinier and resulted in non-messy bowel movements. But scientists at places like Nestle Purina maintain that "there is no evidence that [raw meat diets] provide any specific health benefits". Instead, these companies have warned against the dangers of raw feeding and possibly exposing your pet to salmonella or E coli (кишечная палочка).

In turn, raw-feeding companies and owners point at the number of recalls of processed pet foods. Jonathan Self, who has been feeding his various dogs raw food for 17 years, launched Honey's Real Dog Food in 2009. A former livestock fanner who went vegetarian after struggling to slaughter his pigs, he understands that though he may not need meat to survive, his dogs do. Honey's pork comes from the "organic pig fanner down the road", and its goat meat from "the gourmet goat farm in Norfolk".

The average Honey's customer spends £70-£80 a month on pet food - in comparison with the £43 a month spent by the average British household. Honey's is by no means the priciest raw food option: if your pet is large and you choose one of the more expensive brands, you could find yourself spending in excess of £300 a month.