How to read a dog treat label: ingredients, analysis and small print

Turn the bag over. The front is where a brand tells you how it wants to be seen; the back is where it has to tell you what's inside. The first word on the ingredient list is what you're mostly buying. If you read nothing else, read that.

What does the ingredient order mean?

Ingredients are listed by weight, most to least, the convention in the Australian Standard for pet food, AS 5812. A list that begins with "wheat flour" is mostly wheat flour, and the chicken pictured on the front is somewhere further down. Weight is measured before drying, so fresh meat listed first weighs less once the water is gone. A long list isn't wrong in itself; the question is whether it matches the front.

What do "meal", "by-product", "derivatives" and "flavouring" mean?

Meat meal is animal tissue rendered, dried and ground into a concentrated powder. It can't tell you which animal or which part unless the label names one. By-products are the parts that aren't muscle meat. Organs, some bone, connective tissue; some are exactly the cuts we sell on their own. Derivatives is the broadest term: it came from an animal, and which animal can vary by batch. Flavouring makes a treat taste of a thing rather than being that thing; "natural flavour" says where it came from, not how much is in the recipe.

None of these words means an ingredient is bad, only that it's described by category rather than by name. Codes and chemical names are usually vitamins, minerals, preservatives or colours: an ingredient with a job, not a filler.

What does the analysis panel tell you?

The "typical analysis" table (protein, fat, fibre, moisture) is useful for comparing two products of the same kind. A dried treat at 10% moisture and a soft one at 30% can't be compared line by line: the dry one has more of everything else per gram. It rarely gives calories, which is what the 10% rule runs on. Also look for "treat" versus "complete and balanced", a best-before date and batch number, and country of origin.

Every Pudel product is one ingredient: the named cut of the named animal, nothing added. The list on a bag of beef liver says "beef liver", and the full range reads that way all the way down. The honest test for any label, ours included, is that you shouldn't need to look anything up.

Keep reading: What is meat meal in dog food? A plain-English definition · Single-ingredient dog treats: why one named cut is the point

Sources

• Pet Food Industry Association of Australia. AS 5812:2023 Manufacturing and marketing of pet food. pfiaa.com.au
• FEDIAF (2024). Nutritional Guidelines for Complete and Complementary Pet Food for Cats and Dogs. europeanpetfood.org

Pudel · Reviewed September 2026 · Single-protein, naturally dried dog treats, made in Australia. General information, not veterinary advice.