100% HUMAN GRADE

To ensure your pets eat the safest, healthiest and highest quality foods, we insist on 100% human grade. It’s a real standard no feed-grade food can claim.

The Honest Kitchen has a letter of No Objection from the FDA, to label our foods Human Grade. Our entire supply chain and production process have been reviewed by the FDA on two separate occasions, to earn us this distinction. Human Grade means ‘food grade’, ‘edible’, or fit for human consumption. For us, it’s a line in the sand about the quality and integrity of the finished products we send out the door.

We blend our healthy pet food in a human food facility that makes things like breakfast cereal and bakery mixes. So, we abide by the same strict standards for safety, cleanliness, record-keeping and overall quality as the place that whips up your favorite cookie dough.

See our ingredients standards

IS ALL PET FOOD HUMAN GRADE?

Our recipes meet the nutritional levels established by AAFCO (The Association of American Feed Control Officials), which is the legal way of saying, it’s just like the healthy whole food you eat, but formulated especially for pets.

Some companies use a few ‘human grade’ ingredients, but their processing may not take place in a human food facility, so their products lose their legal human grade status. Old-fashioned pet food like kibble and canned food is ‘feed grade’, which means it might include not-so-tasty by-products, chemicals, fillers and other ingredients that have been condemned as unfit for human consumption (like dying, diseased, disabled or deceased animals). We wouldn’t choose that for our human family, and we don’t think our animal friends deserve it either.

Our Ingredients

From eggs and salmon to pumpkin and parsley, wholesome foods you recognize and can pronounce are the only ingredients we use. Ingredients are sourced from around the world and we’ve worked with many of the same suppliers since we first began in 2002. What we leave out is as important as what we put in.

Our Promise to You

A vast majority of pet food makers use stuff we never use from places we don’t trust. The Honest Kitchen is made in the USA and never contains the potentially unsafe and unhealthy ingredients found in feed-grade products.

Trustable Sources

We only source from folks we know and trust, including a few we started with back in 2002. It’s important to us to have long-standing relationships with producers we know and trust, so we can throw a brick through their window if something’s not quite right, and buy them a pint when everything’s as beautiful as they’ve promised. To meet our 100% human-grade standard, our suppliers must provide proof of food origins, screening, handling, cleaning and more.

Kitchen, not compromise

Most pet food makers would never invite you inside their kitchens—because they’re not kitchens. They’re heavy processing plants. Our company started in our founder’s kitchen, where she made meals for her family (both human and pets). Today, we still prepare food with the same love, and uncompromising quality. Our food is prepared right alongside breakfast cereals and bakery mixes, so it satisfies the same rigorous safety, cleanliness and quality standards of people food.

See our quality assurance program

Thoughtful processes.

Preserving food by dehydration is one of the oldest and most efficient methods of food processing. We’ve taken this time-tested method and used it to create a healthier type of pet food with a more nutritional bang for your hard-earned buck.

Our dehydration process gently removes the moisture from our whole food ingredients, but still maintains all of the nice vitamins and minerals that we get by using real fruits, veggies and lean meats.

When you’re adding a little water to make one of our dehydrated meals, you’re getting the most nutritious food prepared in the most meticulous ways.

See how our food is prepared