Around 15,800 years ago, dogs and people may have been eating together, but making specialized dog food is a relatively new invention. According to researchers involved in two studies published in Nature, archaeological sites in central Türkiye contained some of the earliest confirmed evidence of dog domestication, reported the University of Oxford. Genetic evidence suggested that by nearly 16,000 years ago, domestic dogs were widespread in Europe. These dogs were genetically related to each other yet crossed human cultural lines. Dogs seemed to have lived closely with their humans, even being buried with them. Isotope analysis of the dogs’ remains found the signature of a shared diet with their humans. For example in one area where fish made up a large part of human diets, dogs too a chemical signature of marine diets that overlapped with associated people.
Pet food industry timeline
Dogs have pretty much been eating off human's tables ever since. People and pets didn’t start eating separate foods until after the Industrial Revolution.
Commercial launch: James Spratt introduced the first commercially prepared pet food in England around 1860 after seeing dogs fed ship biscuits. The real modern jump came later: Purina says Dog Chow became the first pet food made by extrusion into kibble in 1956, helping dry food become the mass-market format.
Science changes the category: Hill’s began with Dr. Mark Morris Sr.’s kitchen-made diet for Buddy, a guide dog with kidney disease; Hill’s officially went into business in 1948 with Canine k/d, and Science Diet followed in 1968. Royal Canin began in France in 1968 when veterinarian Jean Cathary created his “yellow soup” for dogs. Iams, founded in 1946, pushed higher-animal-protein, breeder-informed premium nutrition.
Brand-building pattern: Purina grew from a St. Louis farm-feed company founded in 1894; Nestlé Purina is the 2001 Nestlé-Ralston Purina combination. Mars entered pet food in 1935 by buying Chappel Brothers, maker of CHAPPIE canned dog food; PEDIGREE later became Mars’s global dog-food flag. Blue Buffalo, founded in 2002 in Wilton, Connecticut, rode the natural-premium wave after the Bishops’ dog Blue developed cancer.
Regulation and safety: AAFCO was founded in 1909 and added pet-food language to model bills in 1917; it defined “complete and balanced” in 1969 and approved major label modernization in 2023. FDA regulates pet food under the FD&C Act, with labels overseen federally and by states. In Europe, post-crisis reform led to feed-hygiene, marketing/labelling and animal-by-products rules in 2005, 2009 and 2011. Major shocks include 2007 melamine, 2019 Hill’s vitamin D recalls, and FDA’s 2025 H5N1 food-safety-plan reanalysis for uncooked poultry/cattle ingredients.
Tim Wall | ChatGPT
