The Brazilian pet food market is one of the largest in the world and continues growing above the average of other food segments. According to ABINPET data, Brazil holds a prominent position in the global ranking of pet population, with over 140 million pets. But what drives this growth is not just the increase in the animal population: it is the change in the role they occupy within families. When the pet ceases to be a household animal and begins to be treated as a family member, what the owner expects from food changes completely — and this change has direct technical consequences for those who formulate.
What pet humanization means for formulators
The concept of pet humanization describes the transfer of expectations from human consumption to animal consumption. Pet owners have started evaluating pet food labels with the same criteria they use to evaluate a food label for themselves: they want to know which proteins are present and where they come from, they distrust synthetic preservatives, they look for ingredients they recognize by name, and they place value on claims like "natural," "no artificial colors," "fresh ingredients," "gluten-free," and "single protein source.
For the market, this translates to growth in categories such as wet, semi-moist, grain-free, raw, freeze-dried, functional snacks, and prescription diets. For the formulator, it means working with less standardized ingredients, more diverse processing technologies, and a set of technical and regulatory constraints that must be managed simultaneously.
The tension between what the owner wants and what the animal needs
A critical point that humanization puts on the table is the divergence between human quality perception and animal nutritional adequacy. Dogs and cats have specific nutritional requirements that do not necessarily align with human food preferences. Cats are obligate carnivores and need taurine, arginine, pre-formed vitamin A, and arachidonic acid that must be supplied by the formulation regardless of the product's marketing appeal. Dogs have more flexible metabolism but still depend on a balanced nutritional composition that is not always intuitive from the ingredients listed on the label.
This creates a real formulation challenge: meeting the owner's sensory and symbolic expectations without compromising the animal's nutritional adequacy. Products with clean-label ingredient lists and absence of perceived low-quality by-products must still close nutritionally — and often the ingredients that make that closure happen are exactly those the owner would prefer not to see on the label.
Ingredients: the technical implications of new demands
High-value proteins and the digestibility question
The pressure for ingredients with more premium origins — whole chicken, salmon, boneless beef — instead of by-product meals has a direct impact on the nutritional matrix. The digestibility of a fresh wet-processed animal protein differs from the digestibility of the same protein as a meal, and actual amino acid digestibility values must be well established for each ingredient used. Formulations using less processed or less standardized ingredients require stronger analytical bases to support the nutritional matrices used in the formulation process.
In addition, fresh ingredients have high moisture content, which directly affects the composition on an as-fed basis versus a dry-matter basis. A formulation that lists "fresh chicken" as the first ingredient on an as-fed basis may have a significantly lower proportion of animal protein than it appears to the consumer, which requires attention so that the nutritional declaration is accurate and the product is nutritionally adequate.
Functional ingredients: prebiotics, probiotics, and omega-3
Pet humanization introduced a set of ingredients that were exclusive to human functional nutrition. Prebiotics such as FOS and MOS, live probiotics, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA), polyphenolic extracts, glucosamine and chondroitin for joint health, and hydrolyzed collagen for skin and coat are already part of the ingredient portfolio in premium segments. Each of these ingredients has inclusion specificity, processing sensitivity, and interactions with other formula ingredients that must be considered.
Probiotics, for example, have viability compromised by temperature and moisture in the conventional extrusion process, imposing post-addition restrictions or requiring microencapsulation technologies. Highly unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids are unstable in the presence of oxygen and heat, requiring antioxidants compatible with the product's natural appeal and packaging with adequate barrier properties.
Clean label and preservation: the central technical conflict
Products with natural appeal and absence of synthetic preservatives — BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin — need alternative strategies to ensure oxidative and microbiological stability throughout the shelf life. Natural antioxidants such as tocopherols (vitamin E), rosemary extract, and vitamin C have real antioxidant efficacy, but with lower potency and durability than synthetics. For wet foods, thermal process sterilization is sufficient for microbiological control in the closed package, but for dry extruded products, choosing natural antioxidants requires careful formulation of added fat and strict raw material specifications.
Product formats: what changes in formulation and quality control
The growth of categories beyond conventional dry extruded products is one of the most concrete expressions of humanization. Each format has its specific technical implications.
Wet foods
Wet foods in cans, pouches, or trays undergo thermal treatment (retort or pasteurization) that defines the product's microbiological shelf life. Formulation must consider product texture and cohesion after processing, palatability (which differs from dry extruded), water activity, and nutritional declaration on an as-fed basis. Fresh ingredient variability tends to be higher than for meals, requiring more intensive analytical monitoring of raw materials.
Freeze-dried and raw foods
Freeze-dried and raw (processed or not) categories have significant growth in the premium segment. From a technical standpoint, they better preserve protein structure and amino acid profile than high-temperature processes, but they bring serious microbiological control challenges — especially contamination by Salmonella, Listeria, and zoonotic pathogens present in raw animal-origin ingredients. Brazilian regulation for these formats is still being developed, and companies operating in this segment need to structure rigorous quality control protocols to mitigate sanitary risks.
Functional snacks and treats
The snack segment is one of the fastest growing and most diversified. Snacks with functional claims — tartar control, joint health, natural calming, immune support — must simultaneously meet criteria of high palatability, appropriate texture for the animal's size, and technical basis to support the claim on the packaging. Functional snack formulation requires knowledge of active ingredients, evidence-based inclusion ranges, and interactions with other formula components.
Regulation in Brazil: what MAPA establishes for pet food
The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply regulates companion animal food through specific legislation covering product registration, permitted ingredients, authorized additives, and label declarations. Companies developing new products with ingredients not included on the approved ingredient list or with claims lacking regulatory basis must go through an approval process with MAPA before commercializing.
Claims like "grain-free," "single protein source," "organic," and "natural" have specific regulatory definitions — or in some cases, no clear definition at all — that need to be verified before going on the label. The formulator developing the product needs to work together with the company's regulatory area to ensure that the formulation developed supports the intended claims and that the registration process doesn't run into barriers due to incompatibility between the formulation and legal requirements.
Practical formulation challenges in the humanization context
Cost, clean label, and nutritional adequacy: a difficult equation
The triangle between production cost, clean label appeal, and nutritional adequacy is the central challenge of premium pet food formulation. Premium ingredients have significantly higher cost and greater compositional variability than conventional ingredients. Excluding by-products from formulation because the owner does not want to see them on the label may require increasing the inclusion of higher-cost ingredients to maintain the nutritional profile, especially for minerals, essential amino acids, and fat-soluble vitamins that were supplied by the excluded by-products.
The least-cost formulation meeting a premium product's nutritional and regulatory constraints is not simply substituting conventional ingredients with more expensive ones. It requires nutritional matrix modeling for each premium ingredient used, analytical validation of received lots (given that these ingredients have higher variability), and the ability to re-optimize the formula as raw material prices and availability change.
Premium ingredient variability and matrix management
Fresh and minimally processed ingredients have intrinsically higher compositional variability than processed and standardized meals. The protein, moisture, lipid, and amino acid profile composition of a fresh whole chicken lot can vary depending on origin, animal age, season, and slaughter and refrigeration process. Working with these ingredients requires supplier qualification and analytical monitoring programs, frequent updating of nutritional matrices used in formulation, and the ability to adjust the formula when a lot presents composition different from the historical standard.
Formulamix allows real-time re-optimization of pet food formulations as raw material prices change or new ingredient analytical data is incorporated, keeping cost controlled without giving up the product's nutritional and regulatory constraints.
What changes in quality management
Humanization not only changes formulation: it changes what needs to be controlled and monitored throughout the entire production chain. Ingredients with natural appeal and lower degree of processing tend to have higher microbiological risk and greater composition variability. Formulations with highly sensitive functional ingredients require stricter process controls. Products with long shelf life and natural antioxidation need a more robust oxidative stability program.
Ingredient traceability becomes more critical in premium products: when a quality problem is identified — whether by microbiological contamination or nutritional deviation — the ability to quickly identify which lots were affected and which customers received the product is a basic operational requirement. Integrating raw material analytical data with production traceability and the formulation process is what allows agile response when a problem occurs, and also what allows detecting the problem before it reaches the market.