Editorial policy.
How brands are selected, where our product information comes from, who is not allowed to score what, how a correction is made, and exactly what a brand can and cannot change. Published in full, including the parts that are limitations.
Reviewed by the Dog Food Reviews editorial team
Independent scoringUpdated August 2026Not veterinary advice
Where we stand today
This page is the standing policy. The note below is the current commercial status, and it is generated from the same flag that governs every link on the site, so it cannot fall out of date on its own.
Policy reviewed· Reviewed in full by the editorial team
- Brands in the index
- 20
- Every one scored on the same six weighted checks
- Paid placements accepted
- 0
- In any ranking, guide, comparison or award
- Affiliate relationships
- 0
- We earn nothing from links on this site
- Days to answer a correction
- 10
- Business days, in writing, either way
01 · Selection
How a brand gets into the index.
Inclusion is an editorial decision and nothing else. These are the five things that put a brand in front of our scoring model, in the order they apply.
It has to be on sale in Australia.
A brand enters the index when an ordinary Australian household can actually buy it, either from one of the retailers we price-check or direct from the brand. We do not score products that cannot be bought here.
It has to publish enough to be scored.
We need a full ingredient list, a guaranteed analysis, a stated life stage, a country of manufacture and a current price before a brand can be scored across all six pillars. A brand that publishes less than that scores lower on transparency. A brand that publishes almost nothing cannot be scored at all, and we say so rather than guess at the gap.
Australian owners are already comparing it.
We prioritise the brands people are genuinely weighing against each other at the shelf or at the checkout. That is what makes a ranking useful rather than merely exhaustive, and it is why the index grows in the order it does.
The index spans formats, not one aisle.
Fresh delivery, dry kibble, air-dried and raw, prescription ranges, supermarket and retailer house brands are all in scope, so a ranking is not an accident of which aisle we happened to walk down. 8 of the 20 brands in the index have a retailer-owned or exclusive relationship, and each one is labelled on its own review page.
Nobody pays to be in, and nobody pays to be left out.
Brands can submit a product for review. Submission does not guarantee coverage, does not shorten the queue and does not buy a score. A brand that would rather not be reviewed is still reviewed while its products are on sale.
A brand missing from the index is missing because we have not scored it yet, not because it failed. We would rather publish 20 brands we can defend line by line than a longer list we cannot. Every score is applied through the same 100-point methodology, with no separate model for any brand.
Licensed stock photograph
02 · Provenance
Purchased, supplied, or neither.
Neither, for the scores. Dog Food Reviews does not buy the products it scores and does not accept products in exchange for coverage. A score is desk research on what a brand publishes and what it costs in Australian stores, and the table below is the whole of it.
| What we publish | Where it comes from | Feeds the score |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredient list and first ingredient | The manufacturer's own published ingredient panel | Yes |
| Guaranteed analysis, protein and fat | The manufacturer's label and product page | Yes |
| Life stage and complete-and-balanced claim | The manufacturer's label and product page | Yes |
| Price per kg and cost per day | Australian retailer listings across 10 stores, entered and checked by hand | Yes |
| Ownership and country of manufacture | Manufacturer disclosure, and its absence where there is none | Yes |
| Recall history | ACCC recall notices, manufacturer announcements and Australian Veterinary Association communications | Yes |
| Customer sentiment | Published feedback from Australian owners, weighted to long-term feeding | Yes |
| Laboratory analysis of the food itself | Not held. We do not run laboratory or chemical testing | No |
| A product sample supplied by a brand | Disclosed on the page it informed, on the rare occasion we accept one | No |
| Payment, sponsorship or commercial arrangement | None exists with any brand or retailer we cover | No |
“We can tell you what a brand publishes and what it costs to feed. We cannot tell you what is inside the bag, and we will not pretend otherwise.”
Samples, and what happens to them.
On the rare occasion we accept a product sample to assist with an editorial assessment, we say so on the page it informed. The sample does not enter the score, because the score is built from published information that any reader can check for themselves. Accepting one never guarantees coverage and never buys a better result.
We do not accept payment, travel, hospitality or gifts from a brand or a retailer we cover. Where a brand is retailer-owned or exclusive, that relationship is disclosed on its review page, and it is scored on the same six checks as everything else in the index.
03 · Scoring
What the score measures, and what it does not.
One model, six weighted checks, applied identically to every brand in the index. The weights are published, which is what makes a score something you can argue with rather than something you have to take on trust.
The 100-point model
Points available in each pillar
Every brand is scored on all six. Price & Value and Ingredient Quality carry 25 points each, so 50 of every 100 comes down to what a food costs to feed and what is actually in it.
| Pillar | Points available |
|---|---|
| Price & Value | 25 pts |
| Ingredient Quality | 25 pts |
| Nutrition & Suitability | 20 pts |
| Transparency | 15 pts |
| Availability & Convenience | 10 pts |
| Customer Sentiment | 5 pts |
Weights published in our methodology
The four limits
What a score is not.
Not a safety verdict.
A low score always means poor value or weaker disclosure. It is never a claim about the safety of a food, and we do not make claims of that kind about any product in the index.
Not laboratory verified.
We read what a brand publishes. We do not test what is in the bag, and no score on this site should be read as if we had.
Not veterinary advice.
Speak to a registered veterinarian before changing your dog's diet, particularly for a dog with an existing health condition.
Not permanent.
Scores are reviewed on a reformulation, a recall, a significant price shift or updated manufacturer disclosure, and in a full audit each June.
04 · Conflicts
Who writes this, and who is not allowed to.
Dog Food Reviews content is produced by analysts who apply the published methodology to publicly available product data, and every piece is reviewed before it goes out. Our editorial team includes no employees of pet food manufacturers or major pet retailers. The team are not veterinarians, so what we publish about diet and about a dog's health is reviewed by a named veterinarian as well. That is a check on our content, not veterinary advice.
| Situation | The standing rule |
|---|---|
| A writer or editor holds equity in a brand, or works for it | Excluded from scoring, editing or ranking that brand. There is no version of this that gets waived. |
| Someone in the same household works for a brand or its retailer | The same exclusion, declared to the editor before the brand is assigned. |
| Paid consulting or contract work for a brand or a retailer | Excluded from that brand and from any ranking it appears in, and declared before assignment. |
| Payment, travel, hospitality or gifts offered by a brand or retailer | Not accepted. |
| A product sample offered to assist an editorial assessment | May be accepted. Disclosed on the page it informed. Never enters the score, and never guarantees coverage. |
| A disclosed affiliate arrangement applying to every brand in a category | Not a conflict, because it cannot favour one brand over another. None exists today. |
| A conflict is identified after publication | The review is reassigned and re-scored. If the score changes, a correction note is published on the page. |
Who reviews what
Four kinds of work, and who checks each one.
This site does brand and product work, retailer work, work about diet and health, and work about feeding a dog in practice. They need different things from a reviewer, so they do not all carry the same names, and the boundary matters more than the byline: a qualification stated without its limit is the overclaim we are trying not to make.
Brand and product work
The brand scores, the rankings and the product write-ups. Produced and reviewed by our editorial team under the published methodology, with Adam Lorimer as the named contributing reviewer on the brand and product side. He holds no veterinary or nutrition qualification, so no clinical or dietary-health claim carries his name.
Retailer work
The 10 retailer price tables, the retailer scores, the retailer comparisons and the cheapest-at-retailer verdicts. This work carries no personal byline: it is our editorial team's, and every named contributor is recused from it. For the brand and product reviewer named above that is a conflict, set out below. For the others it is simply not their work, and their entries say so.
Diet and health work
What this site says about diet and about a dog's health is reviewed by Dr Chris Wolmarans BVSc, a practising Australian veterinarian in general practice. He is not a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. He reviews the nutrition and health claims and nothing else here: the scores, the prices, the brand-commercial analysis and the retailer coverage are not his work and do not carry his name. A vet reviewing what we publish is not a vet seeing your dog, so nothing on this site is veterinary advice.
Practical feeding work
The owner-facing feeding guides: switching a food, routines and portions, fussy eaters, and storing fresh food. Lucinda Woodford is the named contributing reviewer on practical feeding and owner experience. She is a dog walker, so she spends a very large amount of time with dogs of different ages, energy levels, temperaments and routines, and she reads ingredient panels and compares brands on what an owner is actually getting for the money. She holds no veterinary or nutrition qualification, so no clinical or dietary-health claim carries her name: where one of those guides has to make such a claim it is reviewed by Dr Chris Wolmarans BVSc and credited to him on the page itself. She takes no part in our scores, our prices or our retailer coverage.
Named, not implied
The two conflicts we hold today.
Two of the people named on this site hold a commercial interest that bars them from part of it. Those bars are printed here, in the same words as on their own entries, because a conflict rule that never names anyone is a rule no reader can check. Other contributors are barred from parts of the site too, for a limit of expertise rather than an interest; those bars are in the list above and on their own entries.
Jackson Wilson
Publisher, and owner of the scoring methodology
He is also a brand consultant, which is a commercial interest in the category this site scores. He does not score, rank or write the verdict for any brand he has a consulting relationship with, and where such a brand appears the relationship is disclosed on the page it appears on rather than only here.
Adam Lorimer
Contributing reviewer, brand and product side
He formerly worked at PETstock Group. Petstock is one of the 10 retailers this site prices, so he takes no part in any retailer scoring or retailer content: the retailer scores, the retailer comparisons, the cheapest-at-retailer verdicts and the retailer commentary in our price index. He holds no veterinary or nutrition qualification, so his name is not attached to any clinical or dietary-health claim published here.
What each of them covers, the interests we disclose and the coverage they take no part in are published in full on our contributors and disclosures register. Every other page on this site is written and reviewed by our editorial team, and signed that way.
The one relationship we do have
Published by PetReviews.
Dog Food Reviews is a PetReviews publication, and that is stated on every page of this site rather than buried in a colophon. Retailer profiles are published there instead of here, under the same independence rules. Being published by the same company does not change how a retailer or a brand is scored, and no retailer profile has any bearing on a brand's position in our index.
Declared before, not discovered after
When the register is checked.
Conflicts are declared to the editor before a brand is assigned, not raised once a draft is uncomfortable. That ordering is the whole point: a rule applied after the fact is a negotiation, and a rule applied before it is a rule.
If a conflict surfaces after publication anyway, the affected review is reassigned and re-scored by someone with no interest in the outcome. Where the score changes as a result, the change is published on the page under the corrections process below, with the reason stated.
05 · Corrections
How a correction is made, and where it is logged.
Publishing a number means being answerable for it. Report an error and we will answer within 10 business days, in writing, whichever way it goes.
- Step 01
You report it.
Email us the page URL, the specific claim and the evidence. Brands use exactly the same address and exactly the same process as readers, with no priority lane.
- Step 02
We check it against the source.
We go back to the manufacturer's published information or the retailer listing the figure came from. We do not take the correction on the authority of whoever sent it.
- Step 03
We answer within 10 business days.
In writing, including when the answer is that we are not changing anything, and why. A disagreement with a verdict is not a correction unless a fact behind it is wrong, and we will say which one it is.
- Step 04
If it was material, we publish it.
A material correction is published on the page, not applied as a silent edit. The reader who saw the old figure is entitled to know it moved.
The record
What a published correction carries.
- A dated correction note at the top of the page it affects.
- What the page said before, and what it says now.
- An updated last-modified date on the page.
- A recalculated score, wherever the corrected fact changes one.
Brands submit corrections through the same address and the same process as readers. Corrections are settled on editorial merit, never on the volume of the complaint or the size of the company making it.
Reporting one.
Send the page URL, the specific claim you believe is wrong and the evidence for it to hello@dogfoodreviews.com.au. A screenshot of a current retailer listing or a manufacturer page is the fastest thing you can send us, because it is the same kind of source we scored from.
Complaints that are not corrections, about tone, about a ranking position or about being included at all, go to the same address and get the same 10 business day answer. A disagreement with a verdict is not a correction unless a fact behind it is wrong, and if that is our conclusion we will tell you which fact we checked.
06 · Influence
What a brand can change, and what it cannot.
This is the question the rest of the policy exists to answer, so it is answered in a list rather than a paragraph. Nothing in the right-hand column is available at any price.
What a brand can do
- Submit a product for review through our submit-a-product page.
- Send us updated or corrected product information at any time.
- Report a factual error through the same corrections process a reader uses.
- Tell us a recipe has been reformulated, which triggers a re-score.
- Dispute a score on the record. It stays published while we check it.
What a brand cannot do
- Pay for a place in the index, a ranking position or an award.
- Pay to have its own score lifted, or a competitor's lowered.
- Buy a faster review, a longer review or a kinder one.
- Preview, approve or sign off a review before it publishes.
- Have a review withdrawn because it is unflattering.
- Change the weighting our model applies to it.
On the record
Dog Food Reviews editorial declaration.
No brand has paid to appear in, or improve its position in, any Dog Food Reviews ranking or editorial feature. All scores are produced by our editorial team using our published methodology, independent of any commercial relationship.
As of August 2026, Dog Food Reviews holds no affiliate, sponsorship or commercial arrangement with any brand or retailer it covers, and earns nothing from any link on this site. Sponsored placements, where they appear, are clearly labelled and sit entirely outside the scoring model. The presence or absence of a commercial relationship will never have any effect on a brand's score or its position in our index.
Questions
Editorial policy, answered.
No. Scores and rankings are based entirely on our published 100-point methodology. No payment, sponsorship, or commercial arrangement can improve a brand's score or position in our rankings.
Dog Food Reviews currently has no affiliate relationships and earns nothing from links on this site. If we join an affiliate program in future, affected pages will disclose it, in our affiliate disclosure and on the review pages concerned, and commissions will have no bearing on scoring or editorial recommendations.
Inclusion is an editorial decision. A brand has to be on sale in Australia and publish enough information to be scored on all six pillars: a full ingredient list, a guaranteed analysis, a stated life stage, a country of manufacture and a current price. We prioritise the brands Australian owners are actively comparing, and we cover fresh delivery, dry, air-dried, raw, prescription and retailer house brands so a ranking is not limited to one format. No brand can pay to be included, and no brand can pay to be left out.
Neither feeds a score. Scores are desk research on published information: the manufacturer's own ingredient list and guaranteed analysis, current Australian retail prices, ownership and country of manufacture disclosures, and publicly known recall history. We do not run laboratory testing. If we accept a product sample to assist with an editorial assessment, we disclose it on the page it informed and it does not enter the score.
No. Brands do not preview, approve or sign off reviews, and a review is not withdrawn because a brand dislikes it. A brand can submit a product, send corrected product information, report a factual error through our corrections process, or tell us a recipe has been reformulated, which triggers a re-score.
Email our editorial team at hello@dogfoodreviews.com.au. Include the page URL, the specific claim you believe is incorrect, and supporting evidence. We commit to reviewing corrections within 10 business days and publishing a note if a material change is made.
On the page the correction affects, as a dated note at the top of it, along with an updated last-modified date and a recalculated score wherever the corrected fact changes one. This site does not yet publish a single register of every correction in one place, so the affected page is the record.
Scores are reviewed when we are alerted to a material change: for example, a recipe reformulation, a recall, a significant price shift, or updated manufacturer disclosure. Scores are also reviewed as part of an annual audit each June.
Content is written and reviewed by the Dog Food Reviews editorial team: analysts who apply our published methodology to publicly available product data. The team are not veterinarians, so what we publish about diet and about a dog's health is also reviewed by Dr Chris Wolmarans BVSc, a practising Australian veterinarian in general practice. He reviews those claims only, not our scores, our prices or our retailer coverage, and he is not a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. None of this is veterinary advice, and we recommend speaking to your vet before changing your pet's diet.
Dog Food Reviews is not owned by, funded by, or in an undisclosed commercial arrangement with any pet food brand or retailer. We currently earn nothing from links on this site, and any future affiliate relationship will be disclosed. We may occasionally receive product samples to assist with editorial assessment; these are always disclosed and do not affect scores.
Reviewed by the Dog Food Reviews editorial team
Independent scoringUpdated August 2026Not veterinary advice