Though our pawTree® food is made with very high-quality, nutritious ingredients, our foods cannot be classified as being human grade. We do not see too many claims about human-grade ingredients on package labels, mainly because AAFCO does not have an official definition of the term and the AAFCO Board actually prohibits the printing of ‘Human Grade’ on pet food packaging. Without an approved AAFCO definition, an ingredient or term is not supposed to be used on pet food labels. AAFCO says “human-grade” is false and misleading, and constitutes misbranding, unless every ingredient in the product—and every processing method—meets FDA and USDA requirements for producing, processing and transporting foods suitable for consumption by humans, and every producer of the ingredients is licensed to perform those tasks.
Few pet food companies, if any, can meet this criteria. In addition, our manufacturing facilities are used to producing pet food rather than human food, and this is not in line with the USDA’s definition of human grade. However we have very strict quality control and quality assurance programs including: Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOP’s), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP’s), a Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan, regular lot segregation, as well as other industry best practices.