Nestlé Purina have written an article about vegan and vegetarian dog food that is FULL OF MISINFORMATION!
The irony is in the company that Nestlé Purina bought out in 2020 (see bottom of this article - you may be VERY surprised!)
Prof Andrew Knight even had to reply online to the article that was published by Nestlé Purina in November 2025 as it is so full of untruths about the healthy rise and surge in popularity of sustainable plant-based dog food.
To date, they have not replied to his comments or changed anything about their article, so we feel obliged to expose the misinformation that they are spreading about sustainable plant-based nutrition for dogs.
Why have they written such a damning article on their Nestlé Purina site?
The only reason for spreading this misinformation, is that Nestlé Purina is a billion dollar corporate that floats on the stock exchange.
They are prepared to protect their market shares at any cost as the boom in the growth in sustainable plant-based dog food options is obviously a very big threat to their profit margins!
Quoted from this article to show the sheer value of Nestlé Purina:
"The global pet food market reached a value of nearly $73.56 billion in 2024. The top ten competitors in the market made up to 78.05% of the total market in 2024.
Nestle Purina Pet Care (Nestle SA) was the largest competitor with a 31.81% share of the market, followed by Mars Petcare Inc. with 29.91%, Hill's Pet Nutrition Inc. with 6.09%
The top opportunities in the pet food market segmented by ingredients will arise in the animal derivatives segment, which will gain $16.9 billion of global annual sales by 2029."
That is a shocking statistic of how many billions (no maybe trillions!) of birds, fish and animals will be raised for slaughter to be added to Nestlé Purina's pet food when we have the perfect solution with plant-based and fermentation protein dog food.
With that much money at stake, we see why Nestlé Purina have quoted so many untruths in this article.
Let's bust the myths and misinformation that they are spreading on their Purina website:
First misinformation
"It’s incredibly difficult to create a vegan dog food that can keep dogs healthy in the long term. Dogs need a variety of specific nutrients and have different requirements to humans, meaning you can’t feed a dog the same diet that a vegan person would eat.
In particular, it’s difficult to meet dogs’ protein requirements with a diet that contains only plant protein, and there’s a risk of deficiency of various essential vitamins and minerals too. This means that we don’t recommend feeding your dog a vegan diet unless you’ve sought veterinary nutritional advice." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
ALL complete dog foods need the valuable addition of supplements and nutrients to be recognised as complete and balanced by FEDIAF before it can be marketed.
Most recently, the University of Nottingham conducted an analysis of 31 commercially-available dry dog foods, including six plant-based varieties.
The study concluded that, “when properly formulated”, plant-based foods can be a “healthy and viable alternative to meat-based options”. They highlighted that plant-based dog foods would need to be correctly supplemented with iodine and B vitamins to be nutritionally adequate.
We have chosen only properly supplemented premium complete foods with adequate levels of Vit B and Iodine at Just be Kind. (Listen to Dr Rebecca Brociek here talking about her very important studies done at the University of Nottingham)
The studies done by Dr Brociek also mentioned that 66% of the veterinary diets in the trial eg renal diets with low crude protein (possibly those of Purina as she was unable to mention names in the study) were found to be deficient in one or more essential amino acids, meaning dogs would need to take additional supplements on those diets.
Second misinformation
"A study carried out by The Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association (PFMA) on 86 vegetarian dogs in Europe found that over half the dogs were fed a diet deficient in protein, essential amino acids, calcium, zinc and vitamins D and B12. This shows that it’s still difficult to make a vegetarian diet for dogs that’s healthy and well-balanced." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
The link to this study leads to an error page as UK PetFoods has not been called PFMA since 2022 and this study possibly does not even exist as there is no link - definite fake news with no justification and proper links!
It’s the nutrients that matter and these don’t have to come from another animal. Taurine, for example, is now commonly synthesised for use in both plant-based and conventional commercial dog foods. The synthetic nutrients are molecularly identical to the animal-derived versions and perfectly safe to add to pet foods as quoted by a 2022 handout in UK Petfoods.
We appreciate that cat foods are mentioned in this handout and not dogs as cats have an essential requirement for Taurine to ensure heart and eye health and it has to be added to ALL cat foods.
It is not essential as an addition to dog food unless it is a grain-free or plant-based recipe, but thankfully the molecularly-derived taurine that has to be added to cat food, is used in dog foods too and fully approved by FEDIAF as a feed additive.
Third misinformation
"Feeding a diet that hasn’t got the right balance of nutrients can have serious health consequences for your dog in the long term. For example, some published research suggests that dogs eating vegetarian, vegan or home-prepared diets may be deficient in an amino acid called taurine, and this can increase the risk of a heart disease known as dilated cardiomyopathy." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
Taurine is the first ingredient to be added to all complete vegan dog foods, including its precursor Methionine.
Please read the story about Henry whose heart health IMPROVED when he moved to a complete plant-based dog food diet instead of eating Purina Cardio diet!!
Please note the ingredients below added to the Purina Cardio diet - all of the byproducts of the heavily subsidised animal agriculture and fishing industry with the use of dried chicken, fish oil, pork fat and digest made from chicken entrails! (compare these to the pure and natural ingredients we use in our complete premium plant powered dog foods!)
Dried salmon is also used in the Purina Cardio diet and read the shocking truth behind the salmon industry here.
Fourth misinformation
"Currently, there’s relatively little research published on vegetarian and vegan dog diets, and we don’t yet know of any general health benefits. There have been a few studies carried out, but further research is needed to analyse the long-term health effects." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
Fifth Misinformation
"Feeding this type of diet may be more environmentally friendly than feeding diets containing meat products" - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
It goes without saying that -
Vegan Pet Food is THE ‘Most Effective’ Measure to Tackle the Climate Footprint of Dogs & Cats (read article here)
Remember that Nestlé have pulled out of the dairy methane alliance where they have to declare how they are planning to reduce emissions.
They are more focussed on growing their dairy industry and pet food meat-based market than seeking sustainable and far more nutritious alternatives.
What is the irony in the article published by Nestlé Purina?
After running down vegan dog food with this damning article which encourages the public to avoid vegan dog food, and for vets to not promote it; the pure irony is in the fact that in 2020, Nestlé Purina bought out fresh UK dog food company Lily's Kitchen (as shown by the article below or this link here.)
Why should you NEVER ask your vet for nutritional advice about dogs and cat diets?
I graduated as a vet in the 80's and I learnt NOTHING about dog and cat nutrition at vet school. We were taught the intricacies of how to feed a dairy cow, as well as exactly how to feed a chicken so that it grows quickly and provides a maximum return for farmers.....but dogs and cats?
It was just a given that when we graduated, Hills, Purina and Royal Canin foods were all we needed to know as their diets were the solution to all nutritional problems that we were to encounter.
I worked as a GP vet for 25+ years in the UK at various practices and that is what I did - I recommended the only diets that we were familiar with - all the corporate veterinary prescription diets, until a fateful day in 2018 which changed my life forever!
I had 4 animals to put to sleep for obesity related reasons. That day almost made me emotionally give up my veterinary career, but instead I decided to focus on finding out where the problems lay with how we were feeding our dogs and cats in the UK.
I threw myself into studying nutrition for dogs and cats doing as many courses as I possibly could and realising that just like us - 'The more plants that are added to the diet of our dogs, the healthier they will be'
I announced to my vet husband, inspired by our vegan son; that I was turning both myself and Ruff our adored family dog onto a vegan diet to find the best diet for him. I had SO much to prove as we all adore Ruff and I began importing the best food I could find for Ruff - Green Crunch from Vegdog in Germany, and Just Be Kind was born. This opened up my mind to what we really feed our dogs, and how influenced vets are by corporatisation (just as I was!!)
All that vets know about is foods made by Hills, Nestlé Purina and Mars Petcare (Royal Canin) as these billionaire companies not only float on the stock exchange, but they own thousands of vet practices and even almost every specialist vet practice is owned by the Linnaeus Group that was bought out by Mars Petcare.
When corporatisation and purchase after purchase of vet practices started in 2013, IVC Evidensia as it was then called (Independent Vet Care) bought out thousands of vet practices at very inflated prices. In the words of a vet in Cornwall who sold his practice to them 'huge cheques were paid, mortgages paid off and entire lifestyles changed for us as previous dedicated vet practice owners'.
IVC Evidensia then went on to be bought out by more and more high wealth corporates until eventually, Nestlé Purina increased its stake in the ownership of all of these practices as it too bought a share in IVC Evidensia.
With these thousands of vet practices being bought out and bought out, each time for more and more money, the money has to come from somewhere to repay the debt and yes it is you who goes into a vet practice who has to pay the huge bill with your ill dog or cat!
The saddest bit of all is how every member of the veterinary team in these IVC practices part- owned by Nestlé, are really pawns in having to earn their salaries and promote the drugs and yes the food sold by these practices and lining the shelves of almost every veterinary pharmacy.
They do not do it openly and do not even realise that they are doing it just as I didn't even realise that I had any other option other than when I had an itchy dog, I would recommend medication and the hydrolysed prescription diet marketed so heavily by so many practices - Purina HA.
Look at the ingredients of Purina HA below which contains soya that is not mentioned as being non GMO, so it would be the same soya used to feed our feedlot animals with a possible high risk of pesticide use.
They use fish oils instead of sustainable Algae oil which carries none of the risk of heavy metals as fish oils carry, and the 5th ingredient is pure sugar (which Nestlé knows about only too well as having made their billions from the confectionery industry knowing that addiction sells!)
The addition of pure sugar given daily to your dog would be detrimental to their dental health and hormone health and absolutely contribute to the obesity epidemic that we see and that affected me so much in 2018 as a passionate vet in practice wanting to make a difference.
