Pet Food Label Checklist - How to Read the Small Print
A one-page cheat sheet of what dogs, cats and rabbits can and cannot eat. Print it, stick it on the fridge, and everyone in the house will know the answer at a glance. Free, no sign-up.
This page is not veterinary advice. Paw Multiverse is not a veterinary practice. We cannot examine, diagnose or treat your animal. There are no medicines here, no doses, no home remedies and no treatment steps, on purpose. If your pet is unwell, has swallowed something, or has changed in a way you cannot explain, ring your vet or your nearest emergency clinic and let them decide. Full disclaimer.
A quick fridge reference. Not a substitute for your vet. When unsure, do not feed and call your vet. pawmultiverse.com
Dogs - safe in moderation
- Apple (no seeds)
- Banana
- Blueberries
- Carrots
- Cucumber
- Watermelon (no seeds)
- Strawberries
- Mango (no pit)
- Pineapple
- Cooked egg
- Cooked plain chicken
- Plain rice
- Plain pumpkin
Dogs - never
- Chocolate
- Grapes & raisins
- Onion & garlic
- Xylitol (sweetener)
- Macadamia nuts
- Alcohol
- Caffeine
- Cooked bones
- Avocado
- Raw bread dough
Cats - safe in moderation
- Cooked chicken
- Cooked egg
- Cooked fish (occasional)
- Plain pumpkin
- Catnip
- Small bit of melon
Cats - never
- Chocolate
- Onion & garlic
- Grapes & raisins
- Lilies (plant)
- Milk (most cats)
- Xylitol
- Alcohol
- Raw dough
- Dog food as a diet
Rabbits - good daily
- Grass hay (unlimited)
- Romaine & leafy greens
- Coriander, basil, mint
- Parsley (rotate)
- Small apple slice
- Bell pepper
Rabbits - avoid
- Chocolate
- Bread/cereal/crackers
- Iceberg lettuce
- Avocado
- Onion & garlic
- Potato
- Meat & dairy
- Sugary treats
Emergency? Keep your vet & a pet poison helpline number handy. Full guides at pawmultiverse.com · © 2026 A.I.T. Multiverse Consulting Ltd
Keep it where it counts
The foods that send pets to the vet are usually everyday things left within reach - a dropped grape, the chocolate in a handbag, onion gravy scraped into the bowl. A checklist on the fridge turns “I think that is fine?” into a two-second glance, and it is especially useful for kids, guests and pet-sitters who may not know the rules. Print one for home and one for wherever your pet stays.
This sheet is a quick reference, not the whole story - amounts and exceptions matter, so for any food tap through to the full guide. Start with the instant food search or browse the complete food safety library. And keep your vet’s number and a pet poison helpline saved in your phone, just in case.
Eight things a label must carry
Most of the argument about pet food happens on the front of the bag, which is the part designed by a marketing department. The part worth reading is regulated, and it is on the back.
The Association of American Feed Control Officials publishes what a label must contain. We read it on 4 August 2026. The eight required items are the product name and brand name, what species the food is for, a quantity statement, the guaranteed analysis, the ingredient statement, the nutritional adequacy statement, feeding directions, and the name and address of the guarantor.
One of those eight decides more than the other seven combined, and almost nobody reads it. It is the nutritional adequacy statement, and it gets its own section below.
The product name is a percentage claim in disguise
This is the single most useful thing on this page, because it turns a marketing phrase back into a number. AAFCO enforces naming conventions that most shoppers have never heard of.
| If the name says | AAFCO requires |
|---|---|
| The ingredient alone, as a “100%” claim | The product must contain only that ingredient, “with the exception of any water added for processing”. |
| The ingredient as the name of the product | The named ingredients must be at least 95 per cent by weight excluding processing water, and 70 per cent including it. This is the 95 per cent rule. |
| A qualified name, such as a dinner, entree or formula | The named ingredients must be at least 25 per cent excluding water and 10 per cent including it. This is the 25 per cent rule. |
| “With” an ingredient | That ingredient need only be present at a minimum of 3 per cent each. |
| A “flavour” claim | The flavour source must appear “in the ingredient list”, with matching font sizing. |
Read that table twice and then go and look at a bag. The difference between a product named after an ingredient and a product named as being “with” that ingredient is the difference between ninety-five per cent and three. Both are honest under the rules. Only one of them is what the shopper thinks they are buying.
The font-size clause on flavour claims is there for a reason too. It exists because the size of the word matters to how the claim reads, and somebody had to write a rule about it.
The guaranteed analysis, and why you cannot compare two bags with it
AAFCO requires four basic guarantees: a “minimum percentage of crude protein”, a “minimum percentage of crude fat”, a “maximum percentage of crude fiber” and a “maximum percentage of moisture”. Manufacturers may add more, following moisture, in nutrient profile order.
Three limitations follow directly from that wording and none of them is hidden.
First, they are minimums and maximums, not amounts. A minimum crude protein figure tells you the floor, not the level.
Second, moisture is in the list, and it is the reason a wet food and a dry food cannot be compared on protein percentage as printed. The percentages are of the product as sold, and one of those products is mostly water.
Third, “crude” is an analytical category rather than a nutritional one. It describes what a laboratory method measures, not what an animal can use. Two foods with identical crude protein figures are not necessarily delivering the same thing.
That is as far as we will take it. What any of this means for your animal is a conversation with your vet, and there are no feeding amounts anywhere on this site.
The sentence that actually matters
The nutritional adequacy statement is the closest thing a label has to a verdict, and AAFCO recognises two ways of earning it.
One is formulation. The wording is that the food is “formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO”. That means the recipe has been checked against a profile on paper.
The other is a feeding trial. The wording is “Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate that”. That means animals were fed the food and monitored.
Those are different claims and they sit in the same place on the bag in similar type. If you learn to find one sentence on a label, make it this one, and notice which of the two phrasings it uses.
The statement also names the life stage the food is intended for. That is the other half of it, and it is the half people skip.
reading a bag, in order
--------------------------------
1. turn it over. the front is
advertising.
2. find the nutritional adequacy
statement.
"formulated to meet..." or
"animal feeding tests..." ?
which life stage?
3. read the product NAME again
with the percentage rules in
mind. 95%? 25%? "with" = 3%?
4. ingredient list: descending
order by weight.
5. guaranteed analysis: minimums
and maximums, as sold, so wet
and dry are not comparable.
6. guarantor name and address.
this is who you ring.
7. photograph the batch code
before you decant.
what to feed and how much:
ask your vet. not this page. Ingredient order, and one thing we could not stand up
AAFCO requires ingredients to be “listed in descending order according to their weight”, so the first ingredient is the largest proportion by weight and each subsequent one is smaller.
There is a widely repeated criticism of that rule which says a manufacturer can move a cheap ingredient down the list by splitting it into several sub-varieties, each of which then weighs less individually than a headline ingredient. It is a plausible reading of a weight-ordered list, it is repeated on a great many websites, and we could not find it stated by AAFCO or by any regulator we read.
So it goes here rather than in the main text, labelled for what it is: an argument we could not source. If it matters to your decision, it is worth asking a vet or a nutritionist rather than taking it from us.
One more thing about weight ordering that is in the source and is often missed: the ordering is by weight as the ingredient goes in, which means a wet ingredient carries its water into the ranking.
Europe reads a different rulebook
If you are shopping outside North America, the labelling framework above is not the one on your bag.
The European Pet Food Industry Federation publishes nutritional guidelines which, on the page we read on 4 August 2026, it describes as “the reference document on pet nutrition in Europe” and as addressing the “basic nutrient levels required in cat and dog food”. Its stated audience is manufacturers assessing “the nutritional value of practical pet foods for healthy animals”, along with “EU and local authorities, consumer organisations, professional and customers”. A 2025 version was current when we read it.
The vocabulary that matters most in Europe is the distinction between a complete food and a complementary one. FEDIAF describes complete diets as nutritionally standalone and complementary diets as intended to be fed alongside other food. On a European label that word is doing the same job the nutritional adequacy statement does elsewhere, and it is just as easy to miss.
We could not obtain the formal definitions of complete and complementary from the FEDIAF page itself, so we have described the distinction as that page implies it rather than quoting a definition that was not there.
What we could not source
We could not obtain the United States Food and Drug Administration guidance on reading a pet food label, despite several attempts on the day of writing. That guidance would have added the federal perspective alongside the AAFCO one and its absence is why this page leans on a single North American source.
We could not source the formal definitions of complete and complementary pet food from FEDIAF, as noted above.
We could not source the ingredient splitting argument from any regulator, as noted above.
We could not source anything that would let us compare brands, rate foods, or say that one type of feeding is better than another. There are no brands on this page and there will not be.
We could not, and would not, publish feeding amounts, portion guidance, or anything about how much to give an animal. Labels carry feeding directions because the rules require them; interpreting those for your animal is a conversation with your vet.
Printable: the label checklist
Take it to the shop on your phone, or print it and keep it in the cupboard. It is a reading order, not a scoring system.
Ticks are held until you reload. Print it for the cupboard door.
On the back of the bag
Before you leave the shop
At home, every new bag
Questions for the vet, not for a website
Related pages
If you are checking whether a specific product has been withdrawn, use the pet food recall checker, which explains where recall data comes from and what a clear result does not mean. For foods that are dangerous rather than merely disappointing, the poison control directory traces every line to its source, and the individual pages such as chocolate, grapes and onions go further. The wider hubs are can dogs eat, can cats eat and can my pet eat. For the household side, the pet care plan, and for the money, the vet costs guide.
