An exposé by pet food brand Pooch & Mutt has shown that Bakers, one of the UK’s most popular dog food brands, includes crushed insects, known carcinogens, the controversial antioxidants BHT and BHA, which McDonalds and General Mills have both stopped using due to public pressure.

None of these ingredients included in the Bakers' recipe are shown on the pack and the food's packaging claims that there are no added artificial colours, flavours or preservatives.

In the UK, pet food manufacturers have the option of declaring individual ingredients in their food, or declaring them by categories. Independent pet food companies, like Pooch & Mutt, tend to declare individual ingredients, as they want customers to know about the high quality ingredients that they put in their foods. Multinational companies like Mars (Pedigree, Chappie, Whiskas, Kitekat) and Nestle (Bakers, Bonio, GoCat) tend to list ingredients by category.

According to the FSA this “allows for fluctuations in the supply of the raw materials used and provides flexibility for labelling ingredients”. In reality, this means it can be incredibly hard for customers to find out what is really in their dog’s food.

While it’s not news that many multinationals make ingredient choices based on profit over the consumer’s health, in most cases customers know that what they are buying is an unhealthy treat, which is consumed occasionally. This is not the case with pet food, as the ‘complete food’ should make up the majority of the pets’ diet and packs, such as the Bakers pack, contain multiple health claims.

Guy Blaskey, founder of Pooch & Mutt, commented, “There was a of lot of criticism of Bakers’ old recipe online, and it was good to see that they responded to this with an updated recipe. We feel that Pooch & Mutt plays an important role in helping customers do what is right for their dogs and to better understand what they feed their pets, and therefore demand more of manufacturers at all ends of the spectrum. We first looked at the recipe out of curiosity, as we delved deeper we were pretty shocked."

Bakers includes a natural colourant, Carmines, which is made from ground-up cochineal insects. This ingredient is added to give the food a red colour, despite the fact that dogs cannot see red.

BHA is a known carcinogen and BHT is banned in Japan. In line with EU law these ingredients are antioxidants rather than preservatives and can be classified as additives.

A Purina spokesperson said: ‘This campaign is needlessly scaring consumers about the quality of Bakers and could cause pet owners unnecessary concern about what they’re feeding their pets. We create food that will keep pets happy and healthy and which is nutritious, balanced and safe.”

The spokesperson went on to say that pet food production is highly regulated and that all Purina products comply with strict UK and EU legislation. The colours and other additives that Bakers use are carefully controlled by a number of authorities and are approved for use in cat, dog and human food across Europe.