Food Friday: Merrick Backcountry Raw Infused Great Plains Red Recipe

I just got a bag of Merrick's new Backcountry Raw Infused dog food. I got the Great Plains Red Recipe, which is a lamb- and salmon-based food that is poultry-free and egg-free. This is a grain-free kibble that is mixed with chunks of freeze-dried raw meat.

Brisbane is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs. Most safe kibbles for him are fish-based, so it's nice to find one that's sort of based on terrestrial animals and doesn't manage to sneak egg whites or duck fat in there. Briz eats anything edible so taste isn't really an issue for him. Ru is significantly more picky but enjoyed this quite a bit.

It's worth noting that the bag proclaims this to be a beef, lamb, and rabbit food. While it does contain those meats, the primary meat meal ingredients are lamb meal and salmon meal, which make up a much greater percentage of the food once all the water is cooked out.

I like Merrick for a number of reasons. The company produces their own food in their own facility in the USA. Most of their ingredients are sourced from the USA, with some sourced from places like New Zealand where higher quality lamb is available. The company tests its ingredients and its finished products as well. While Merrick had several product recalls in 2010 and 2011, the products recalled were all treats. Merrick's canned and dry foods have never been recalled as far as I can tell.

I also like the immense variety of flavors and recipes that Merrick offers.

While I may like the company and their products, however, I do find the hype surrounding this Backcountry Raw Infused food to be a bit overdone. They've gone full Natural Fallacy with this one, complete with pictures of wolves and excessive use of the word "ancestral". Still, it's a great company if that's my biggest complaint.

At 374 kcal per cup, Merrick Backcountry Raw Infused Great Plains Red Recipe is lower calorie than Acana Ranchlands. This is better for Brisbane, who needs his calories limited, but not so good for Ru's tiny stomach. Still, this would be a good choice of food if I decided to feed my dogs only one thing.

Food Friday: Acana Ranchlands

The kibble of the week is Acana Ranchlands, which is definitely my favorite dog food. When my dogs are eating nothing but kibble, this is what they are eating. There are a lot of grain-free, poultry-free, egg-free, fish-based kibbles out there, but not so many based on red meat.

Dog Food Logic taught me that the ingredients that go into most dog foods follow a long and convoluted supply chain. The words used in the ingredients lists do not always mean what I think they mean. The cooked, ground, and dried ingredients in a dog food may have gone through several weeks or even months of processing before they even make it to the facility where the food is made.

Acana uses fresh ingredients that are never frozen. Since they use locally- and regionally-sourced ingredients, a lot of the important stuff in their food gets there within a few days of being harvested. The primary ingredients are beef and lamb from Alberta, Canada. The fruits and vegetables come from local growers, and everything is delivered fresh and cooked right there in the Acana kitchens. They only make their own foods, and don't co-pack for anyone or outsource anything.

Questionable Claims
Like Orijen (both brands are from parent company Champion Pet Foods) Acana's packaging carries a whole lot of claims and statements about wolves and how nature designed canines to eat a certain way. I appreciate that most of these claims are in fairly small print on the bag, the back of which is covered liberally with even tinier print. It's a lot of information, but they aren't screaming in my face about it.

Following the Trail
Not only does Acana not use a co-packer or any sort of outsourcing to make their foods, they have that information all over their website to help consumers understand this convoluted part of the pet food industry. Acana does not make food for anyone else, either. I feel like everyone else should run their pet food companies like this, that way we wouldn't have recalls hitting half a dozen different brands at the same time.

The Good Stuff
Acana is made entirely of good stuff. Brisbane can eat both their Ranchlands and Pacifica formulas, that's half of their Regionals foods. He can also have two out of three of their Singles foods, it's pretty unusual for a company to have that many different Briz-safe foods. When someone asks me what the very best kibble is, I say Acana and Orijen. Acana usually gets my vote though, just because they have more than one food suitable for Brisbane's poultry and egg allergies.

Food Friday: Canidae Pure Land

Our current bag of kibble is Canidae Pure Land, a grain-free lamb-based kibble. This food uses lamb meal and bison meat as the sole protein sources, with sweet potatoes, peas, and chickpeas providing carbohydrates and canola oil providing the fat. It is poultry-free and egg-free, so Brisbane can eat it. He can actually have two of the four Canidae Pure foods, which I think is pretty cool. Like most grain-free kibbles, Canidae Pure Land is nutritionally dense with 474 kcal per cup.

Having just finished reading Dog Food Logic by Linda P. Case, and also read in detail the ingredient lists for over 800 different kibbles now, I am totally unimpressed with Canidae's label claims. It's nothing against Canidae really, nearly every dog food company puts this stuff on their bags. These things are almost entirely unregulated and companies can get away with putting nearly anything on there if they word it correctly. Still, I enjoy the opportunity to post snarky stuff about almost everything.

Questionable Claims
I didn't take a close enough picture to make everything on the bag readable, but see right there where it says "Made with Fresh Bison"? The only bison in this kibble is in the form of fresh meat, which is made mostly of water. Bison may be the first ingredient on the list, but after the cooking process there is only 10-20% of it left. The next ingredient is lamb meal, a protein that is already cooked, dried, and therefore ends up providing the bulk of the protein in Canidae Pure Land.

What is that white stuff anyway?

The fact that Canidae Pure Land is made up of "Just Seven Ingredients* *(plus added vitamins, minerals, natural flavors, and probiotics)" is also kind of silly because most uber-high-quality grain-free kibbles have a very similar-looking ingredient list. Here is the actual Pure Land ingredient list:

Bison, lamb meal, sweet potatoes, peas, chickpeas, canola oil, suncured alfalfa, natural flavor, minerals (iron proteinate, zinc proteinate, copper proteinate, ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate, copper sulfate, potassium iodide, manganese proteinate, manganous oxide, manganese sulfate, sodium selenite), vitamins (vitamin E supplement, thiamine mononitrate, ascorbic acid, vitamin A supplement, biotin, niacin, calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin B12 supplement, riboflavin, vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid), choline chloride, dried enterococcus faecium fermentation product, dried lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried lactobacillus casei fermentation product, dried lactobacillus plantarum fermentation product, dried trichoderma longibrachiatum fermentation extract, mixed tocopherols
Following the Trail
While Canidae claims to own their own production facilities and manufacture their own foods, many sources report that at least some of their kibbles, including grain-free Pure, are manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods, Diamond makes their own brands of food, but they also have  kickass production facilities and use their equipment to make foods for a bunch of companies that don't mind outsourcing. How do we know who outsources? Most companies aren't exactly forthcoming about who makes their foods and where, so consumers only find this out when a recall happens. The 2012 Diamond Pet Food recall affected Kirkland Signature, Natural Balance, Wellness, Taste of the Wild, Solid Gold, and Chicken Soup, among others. Canidae Pure Land is probably produced domestically, and possibly in a Canidae-owned facility, we'll find out the next time a salmonella-contamination recall happens.

The Good Stuff

All snark aside, this is an extremely high-quality food, otherwise I wouldn't be feeding it to my dogs. Most Canidae Pure foods rate five stars on our beloved Dog Food Advisor, but Pure Land only gets four due to its lower estimated meat content. As soon as I learn how to estimate meat content, I will report my own findings as well. I appreciate that Canidae limited their ingredient list and didn't pack a bit of every known meat animal into this food. It remains one of the few non-fish kibbles that Brisbane can have with his chicken, turkey, duck, and egg allergies. It does not contain white potatoes, which many dog owners have also been avoiding lately. Brisbane, Ru, and foster dog Ulysses all love Canidae Pure Land (along with pretty much anything edible and a few things that aren't). It doesn't upset anyone's tummy or leave them smelling suspiciously fishy.

My 4lb bag of Canidae Pure Land has some kibbles with a white residue. I'm not sure what to make of this, so I emailed the company to ask. So far it smells fine and doesn't seem to bother the dogs, so it's probably not deadly poison. If anyone has any tummy upsets unrelated to eating Kongs, this will probably be the first thing I eliminate from their diets, but since they get a lot more to eat than just kibble I'm comfortable feeding it for now.