Is Your Cat Food Regulated in Australia?

You would assume that before a bag of cat food reaches the shelf, someone official has checked it. Tested it, approved it, confirmed it is safe and that the label is true. In Australia, for the most part, no one has.

The system runs largely on trust, and on the industry checking itself.

What “regulated” would actually mean

When people picture food regulation, they picture something like the rules covering human food: enforceable standards, inspections, and a body with the power to order a product off the shelf. Pet food has almost none of that.

What it has instead is a voluntary standard, AS 5812, which sets out reasonable expectations for how pet food should be made, labelled, and recalled. The catch is in the word voluntary. A manufacturer does not have to follow it, does not have to be audited against it, and faces no penalty for ignoring it. The standard is administered through the industry's own body, which has no authority over companies that simply choose not to join.

The agencies you would expect to be involved are not

Three bodies that owners often assume cover pet food do not.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand sets the rules for food meant for people. Its remit stops there. A 2020 review of its governing act left pet food deliberately out of scope.

The consumer regulator, the ACCC, can in theory force a recall under consumer law, but in practice that power is reserved for products that injure people. It has not been used to compel a pet food recall.

The Department of Agriculture checks imported pet food, but only for biosecurity, to keep diseases out of the country, not to judge whether the food is safe or nutritious. It has said plainly that it has no legal authority to regulate the safety of imported pet food.

That leaves the actual responsibility sitting with state and territory governments, where it is covered mostly by the voluntary standard rather than by enforced law. The honest summary, used by both the consumer group CHOICE and a Senate committee, is that pet food in Australia is largely self-regulated.

The case that proved the point

In 2018, this stopped being abstract. A specialty dog food, Advance Dermocare, was linked to a cluster of dogs developing megaoesophagus, a serious condition that had not previously been tied to diet. A University of Melbourne investigation led by Associate Professor Caroline Mansfield (PhD) found the link to the food extremely strong, with about a one in a million chance of being coincidence.

The detail that mattered was the timing. Months passed between vets first suspecting the food and the product being recalled, because the recall was voluntary and the manufacturer was under no obligation to act faster. The cause was never definitively identified.

The case triggered a Senate inquiry into the safety of pet food, which reported later that year with seven recommendations, including making the standard mandatory and setting up a way for the public to report problems. Several years on, almost none of that has happened. The standard is still voluntary. There is still no public reporting system for owners. The inquiry named the problem clearly, and the problem is still here.

What this means for you

It does not mean Australian cat food is unsafe. Most of it is made by companies with real quality controls, and serious incidents are rare. What it means is that the safety net you might assume exists mostly does not, so a little of the checking falls to you.

If you ever suspect a problem with a food, the single most useful step is to see your vet, because vets are the only people who can log a report into the national tracking system that flags emerging problems. Beyond that, contact the manufacturer and keep the packaging and batch details.

We have written the full version of what to do, and how the recall system actually works, in our guide to cat food recalls in Australia.

Why we built KibbleGuide around this

This gap is the reason this site exists. If no one is required to tell you plainly what is in a product or how it is made, then the next best thing is a place that reads the labels carefully and shows you what they do and do not say. That is what our ingredient transparency tools and ownership map are for: not to rank or score food, but to give you the information the system does not require anyone to hand you.

Related reading

• Cat Food Recalls in Australia How recalls actually work here, the notable ones affecting cats, and what to do if you suspect a problem.
• The Label Guide How to read an Australian cat food label and what manufacturers are not required to disclose.
• Brand Ownership Who actually owns each brand on Australian shelves, and the multinationals behind them.

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