Premium

How it works

Words including premium, super-premium, ultra-premium and holistic are unregulated on pet food, meaning a manufacturer may use them regardless of what is in the bag. No ingredient standard, no nutrient threshold and no testing requirement attaches to any of them. That is worth separating from price: a food may well be good, and the word on the front is not the evidence for it. The regulated parts of a label are the adequacy statement, the ingredient list and the guaranteed analysis.

What it looks like

Two foods sit side by side, one labeled premium at twice the price. Both carry the same adequacy statement for adult maintenance. The word on the front distinguishes them and the regulated parts of the label do not.

Commonly confused with

Natural

Natural is defined by AAFCO, narrowly, and describes how ingredients were derived. Premium is defined nowhere. Both appear on the front of a bag and only one of them means anything.

Related terms