Almo Nature Bio Organic Maintenance: Beef review

Our Average band is where this one settles, and the reason is what the ingredient list leaves as a category rather than a name. Organic certification is a real thing to buy and a real standard to farm to. It still says nothing about which animal or which cereal went into the tin, so a scoring system reading the label has very little to hold on to. Protein and processing reads Poor for that reason, while nutritional balance comes out Outstanding and transparency Excellent.

The analysis reads considerably better than the ingredient list does. Protein converts to 52.6% of dry matter and fat to 26.3%, both strong for a wet food, and estimated carbohydrate is only 5.3% of dry matter where the category typically runs at 15.8%. The typical adult wet food occupies our Excellent band, so there is a real distance between this tin and the shelf around it. That distance is in how the ingredient list is written, not in what the dog is being fed.

Ingredients, as declared: Additives - nutritional additives: vitamin D3 (3a671) 231 IU/kg, vitamin E (3a700) 444 mg/kg, vitamin B1 (3a821) 222 mg/kg. Meat* and animal by-products*, fish* and fish derivatives*(beef* min. 4 %), grains*, vegetable protein extracts*, minerals. *ORGANIC. 100% of the ingredients of agricultural origin come from organic farming. FR-BIO-10.

The working list runs to four entries and three of them are legal categories. Meat and animal by-products can be any warm-blooded land animal in any proportion, fish and fish derivatives does the same job for the sea, and grains can be any cereal at all. The one fixed point is beef at a minimum of 4%, which is what gives the tin its name.

Vegetable protein extracts is the entry that will bother a careful reader most. It names neither the plant nor the method used to pull the protein out. The usual sources are soya, maize and wheat, none of which are first choices for a dog with a history of dietary intolerance. Plant protein also does less for a dog than animal protein does, so how much of that 52.6% dry-matter protein figure comes from it is a fair thing to wonder about.

The organic claim is the part that can actually be verified. The asterisks run through the whole list, the pack carries a certifier code, and the standard behind those ingredients is therefore checkable even though the ingredients themselves are not. For an owner buying on farming practice, that is the trade being offered.

Nothing on the list reads as a colouring, a thickener or a flavouring, which is worth noting on a wet food. The added panel is short and every entry in it is dosed: vitamin D3 at 231 IU/kg, vitamin E at 444 mg/kg and vitamin B1 at 222 mg/kg. For a tin this moist and this lean on starch, the analysis is doing the work and the additive panel is not.

£11.97 a kilo, in 100 g tins sold in packs of 32.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 1026 grams a day, working out at £12.28, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). These are light tins at 82 kcal per 100g, so the daily weight runs high, and many owners serve a wet food like this alongside another.