Inflation or Price Gouging in Pet Food? – Truth about Pet Food

August 23, 2022 Kar-Bay-Inc 0 Comments

After seeing numerous tweets from pet food consumers complaining about significant price hikes in pet food, we did a little research.

We searched on Wayback Machine for prices of pet food in 2020 from the archived pages of Chewy.com, Petco.com and Walmart.com. (Pet foods selected were randomly chosen based on pages available on Wayback Machine). Then we located those same pet food products on the current (2022) websites of Chewy, Petco and Walmart.

As comparison we also looked at a few human food prices from archived pages on Wayback Machine and current prices from Walmart.com. Such as…

The cost of a ‘Family Size’ box of Honey Nut Cheerios has increased 38.8% in just two years. The Cheerios Family Size box decreased in size – from 19.5 ounces in 2020 to 18.8 ounces in 2022. Of the three human foods we compared, Cheerios was the highest in price increases.

The highest price increase of Cheerios doesn’t even compare to the highest price increase we found in pet food…

The price of this 12 pound bag of Merrick cat food increased 103.8% in only two years. The price was $21.67 in 2020, increasing to $41.98 in 2022.

Comparing more dry cat foods…

In the dry cat food category, Merrick (owned by Purina) was the highest price increase and Orijen (owned by Champion) was the lowest at 0% price change in two years.

Comparing Dry Dog Foods…

Royal Canin (owned by Mars) and Purina were the highest price increases, and again Orijen was the lowest price increase in dry dog foods.

Comparing Can Cat Foods…

Purina (again) was the highest price increase, a 19% higher price increase than the next product from Royal Canin.

Comparing Can Dog Foods…

A Purina pet food (again) was the highest price increase at 85% in two years.

All of the above pet foods are feed grade. Feed grade pet foods are allowed by FDA to utilize inferior quality of ingredients, transport those ingredients non-refrigerated, warehouse those ingredients non-refrigerated, and manufacturing conditions are significantly less strict. In other words, price increases due to increased costs of these products shouldn’t be as significant as human grade pet foods (or human food products). Comparing the price increase of a few Human Grade cat and dog foods…

Interestingly, the human grade pet foods price increases were significantly lower than almost all of the feed grade pet foods.

If we use the highest price increase of a human food as a threshold (Cheerios – 38.8%) for pet food – even though that is significantly higher than Human Grade Pet Food increases – the following pet foods price increases were above that threshold…

Question to pet owners…

Are some pet food companies taking advantage of inflation, to the extent of price gouging?

Wishing you and your pet the best –

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food

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