Gunnar Hallmann, Industry Director Pet and Aqua, ANDRITZ
Pet owners increasingly want their pets to eat food they would recognise from their own kitchens. To them, familiar ingredients signal care and quality – and that perception sells. This has ignited an arms race across the pet food industry, with brands competing over ingredient quality and fresh meat content. So much so, in fact, that some premium kibble formulations now boldly declare figures of 50% fresh meat or more – as calculated as part of the total formula.
Yet behind every one of those claims sits a manufacturing challenge that is anything but simple. Boosting fresh meat inclusion in extruded kibble touches every stage of the production line – grinding, mixing, extrusion, drying, coating – and affects texture, shelf life, food safety, and energy consumption. Get the balance wrong, and the product meant to reassure pet owners quickly becomes a liability.
The fresh meat challenge
Fresh meat inclusion in pet food is not a new idea, but its prominence has grown sharply over the past decade. In the late 1990s, mainstream kibble recipes leaned heavily on dried or rendered meat meals – consistent and predictable on the processing line. As fresh meat contains around 70–75% moisture, it was harder to justify on process-control grounds alone.
Pets are increasingly seen as a part of the family. As that bond has deepened, pet food has borrowed increasingly from human food trends, and high fresh meat content has shifted from a boutique differentiator to a broad market expectation. That pressure is not going away, and as inclusion rates rise, the implications ripple through every stage of production.
Fresh meat arrives at the plant carrying high moisture, fat, and protein levels by species and cut. At each stage, those characteristics create conditions that a conventional meal-based line was never designed to manage. The wetter, fattier dough entering the extruder behaves differently under heat and pressure. Fat also acts as a lubricant in the barrel, affecting how thoroughly the product is cooked. The drying stage can be just as unforgiving: a recipe built around 60% fresh chicken – at roughly 70% moisture – contains an enormous volume of water that must be driven off before the kibble is shelf-stable. At such high inclusion levels of fresh meat, a pre-drying step is typically required ahead of the main dryer to handle the excess moisture load. That demands higher dryer capacity and more energy than a meal-based equivalent, and the costs quickly add up.
Pet food nutritionists are constantly adapting recipes to the supply chain environment, but the process must be adjusted to match those raw material variations too; otherwise, product quality suffers. This often takes manufacturers by surprise.
Food safety is not optional
Food safety and hygiene are where the stakes get even higher, since fresh meat carries a microbial load that dried ingredients do not. The extrusion process of combining heat and pressure provides a significant reduction in pathogens. But managing hygiene across a line processing high volumes of fresh meat demands rigorous attention at every stage. In practice, that means proper temperature control, mixing, contact surface design, and condensation control in the post-extrusion environment all need to be carefully managed. Neglecting hygiene in any one of these stages introduces serious food safety and commercial risks.
Many pet food plants in the UK were designed for meal-based recipes and are now being pushed far beyond their original design brief as fresh meat inclusion rises. Machines must be checked proactively, as an unplanned stoppage on a line processing large volumes of raw protein is as much a food safety risk as an operational one.
Process planning meets formulation reality
There is no equipment configuration or formulation strategy that makes these trade-offs disappear. Water must still be removed. Microbial risk must still be managed. Energy must still be consumed. Experience shows that lines designed from the outset for fresh‑meat handling behave very differently to those retrofitted under pressure, particularly as inclusion rates rise and raw material variability increases.
When a recipe formulation changes, the implications must be traced across the whole production process. It requires collaboration between manufacturers bringing formulation knowledge and market ambition and suppliers bringing process expertise and experience. Ultimately, the best solutions are like the best recipes – they require a deep understanding of every ingredient involved, not just the ones on the label.
