The German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest tested 22 wet dog food products. MAC 's was also part of the test with the Chicken & Lamb variety.
The non-profit organization Stiftung Warentest has often been criticized in the past for its questionable evaluation methods and results. In particular, the test criteria and methods are often not presented in a comprehensible and transparent manner. This was also the case with this year's wet dog food test: Here, for example, it didn't matter what species-appropriate nutrition means, how high the meat content of the products is or which animal the ingredients come from. An open declaration with precise details of the contents is even rated negatively in the test.
The product "Fine meal with lamb & chicken" from Edeka, which costs only around 89 cents per can, received the quality rating "very good" from Stiftung Warentest. In our opinion, this is problematic when you look at the distribution of costs for wet food: in addition to the costs for the empty can, label, outer carton and transport costs, the discounter certainly also earns money from the sale of the product. There is no room for high-quality ingredients in such a cheap product. This can also be seen in the content information: in addition to a few smaller percentages, such as four percent lamb and chicken each, around 80 percent of the content is not declared in more detail. For a large part of the feed, it is therefore unclear from which animal the meat comes and which parts of this animal were processed. Such a vague declaration leaves consumers in the dark about the exact composition of the feed, but is given a very good overall rating in the declaration category.
Here is the composition of the "test winner": Meat and animal by-products (including 4% lamb, 4% chicken), cereals, bakery products (4% pasta), vegetables (4% carrots), minerals, sugar. (Source)
The MAC 's chicken & lamb wet food tested by Stiftung Warentest received good marks in many important categories. The product was rated as good, particularly in the areas of nutritional quality, harmful substances and packaging. We are very pleased about this and it reflects the high quality of our animal feed. Our feed also received a good rating in the handling and recyclability categories.
The fact that our feed contains neither grain nor attractants was viewed negatively. We consider this information important as it provides transparency to the consumer and demonstrates the values of our company. For this reason, too, we openly state in the table of contents which parts of the animals have been processed in our products. We consider it wrong to rate such a declaration as defective.
Our information on the feeding recommendation was also given a bad rating, as according to the consumer organization it should not be accurate enough. In the next few weeks, a revised version of the feed will be available in stores, in which the feeding recommendation is broken down in even more detail. However, we believe that the actual feeding amount depends heavily on a dog's age, breed, activity level and individual metabolism. After all, an active Border Collie weighing 15 kilograms needs different amounts of food than a bulldog of the same weight that is little exercised, or a whippet. In humans, too, food intake depends not only on weight, but also on many other factors such as physique, gender and size.
In terms of content, our MAC 's wet food chicken & lamb did well. These categories are important to us and prove the high quality of our feed. Based on the grades given in the individual categories, our food should have received an overall grade of 2.6. However, due to the non-transparent devaluation system, the overall rating of our product is worse. According to Stiftung Warentest, the quality rating is poor, especially due to the poor rating in the area of feeding recommendations, which downgraded the overall rating by a whole grade. We cannot understand this rating system and the resulting overall rating.
We stand behind our products out of conviction and are happy to answer any questions you may have!
Best regards
Pro Pet Koller GmbH & Co. KG
