Dog treat innovations 2016 – are all about the packaging!
Or an innovation in dog play toy balls, or in packaging. Innovation awards are usually given by associations trying to make best friends with large corporations, and they act as a magnifier for new product releases by the companies. Hand in glove to sell your pup a dud.
Like human innovation products, it seems that a new package size and new packaging is FAR more important than actually what’s inside of the packaging.
And the reason why is simple. If you want to make big money in dog treats, you need to have very cheap ingredients, because people are willing to spend only so much after they have paid a fortune every month on grain based dog food, in pretty packaging.
The dog food companies think innovative dog treats are any kind of grain or vegetable, with a hint of meat, BUT the most important thing is convincing a dog that would not normally eat grain, to eat it as its main meal. If you can do that, then dog treats are a snip ! Just add the right amount of oil, sugar and salt and most animals on earth will fall for it.
This doesn’t mean that dogs are dumb, but it means that humans paid a lot of money in labs are smarter at fooling dog’s senses. The labelling laws for dog food and dog treats have always been a great ally to the massive multinational with the massive advertising budgets.
Dog food needs to meet ‘aafco’ nutrition rules which are quantified values, nothing to do with the type of source (ie grain versus meat) or the bio-availability. All they have to do is throw enough minerals and vitamins in to meet the excessive dog food association requirements (set artificially high to rule out meat and meat by products by themselves as an allowed dog food) ! There is NO requirement for minimum levels of MEAT in any dog food. They only put it in there to achieve minimum potein requirements, and so they can include a great meat picture on the package.
What nutrition requirements do dog treats have to meet?
Consider that dog treats don’t even have an artificial nutrition ‘guide’.
All dog treats have to usually do, particularly in mixed ingredient treats (ie grain and meat) is to list the ingredients in order of percentage. But of course ingredient splitting has long been a known method of fooling owners into thinking that there is a reasonable amount of meat in a treat.
Did you know that typically the meat amount in a dog treat is the same if not less than in dog food (thirty percent).
THIS is why when you talk about INNOVATIONS in dog treats its about the packaging.
The reason is that a real innovation would be including majority or ALL MEAT as a dog treat. But an all meat product quickly becomes a commodity and hard for corporates to make a huge margin on.
If you wanted beef jerky, and its 100% how would you release an INNOVATIVE beef jerky? You can’t make it 110%. And adding fat, sugar and salt to it would actually dilute the meat amount. It might make it ‘more attractive’ to a dog to eat (adding additives), but it would make it LESS HEALTHY.
At Bruce’s healthy dog treats, we innovate by keeping packaging simple, prices low and providing excellent service (fast and accurate). We give real advice based on science, not what is written on the dog food packaging.
We can’t typically (and don’t want to) ADD anything to our meat treats (we prefer the additives are taken away).
We remain a niche dog service company, because we have values and believe in what we sell. We put dogs and owner first. We are not all about ‘profit and loss’ sheets and having to answer to the board as how to make more money by providing less meat to dogs.
Perhaps the next time you hear or read about a dog treat innovation, you will see that as code for what it really is, a method of extracting more money out of owners, by providing less meat or nutrition !