The research changing what we think about dog treats

Tell me a little bit about your research?

We work quite a lot with leading veterinary dentists in the field, and they’ve been remarking to us more and more that they were seeing lots of painful complex tooth fractures in dogs as a direct result of chewing on hard chew toys. They really wanted us to help them understand what a safe limit would be for toys around textural safety. 

So we decided to commission some research with the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school, because they are absolute experts in the dental area to look at defining a safe upper limit when it comes to texture. How much force is needed to break a dog’s teeth? Not many people know or realise that dog’s teeth are actually a lot weaker than ours, the enamel on their teeth is six times thinner than a human’s teeth. So they really are quite vulnerable.

How does the research from the University of Pennsylvania aid your work?

What that research has done is setting limits for how hard a product should be. That’s helped us then ensure that everything within our own portfolio never goes beyond that guideline. So we’ve managed to audit everything that we make and sell globally and ensure that it stays on the right side of that upper limit. Going forward, it’s always something that’s top of mind for us when we’re thinking of new innovations, particularly around occupational chews, which are hugely popular, and ensuring that you don’t trade off lasting time with hardness because it’s not in the best interest of the dog quite often. It’s one in four dogs, who’ve got tooth fractures. So it’s very common.

What does the EVDS endorsement mean?

It stands for the European Veterinary Dental Society. That’s an organisation that exists to educate veterinary professionals in dentistry and to encourage research to further that field as well. We talk a lot with the EVDS and they help guide us in our communications. We told them about the research being done at Pennsylvania once the research was published and presented. 

They were really impressed with it because they also obviously recognise that there’s a problem here with hard chews and toys so they were therefore very happy to endorse our products that fall within this guideline. Once we’ve got that endorsement on pack, we can then demonstrate that these products are going to be fine for the dogs to chew on and highly unlikely to cause any problems.

Do you think that Mars’ commitment to scientific research separates you from other  pet food and treat companies?

I think we’re in a relatively unique position particularly now that the Mars Petcare business is more all encompassing. So we have the veterinary health group, we have all our veterinary practices globally. So we’re really well set up with that and the Waltham research establishment as well to ensure that we can do pioneering scientific research, we publish it openly and share across industries as needed. I think we’re, we’re well set out, we have lots of access to data, and animal data. And I think after 100 years providing products for pets, I think we have a very good understanding of what a pet parent’s needs are as well as the animals.

Where does it go from here?

Well, we’ll continue to apply this new understanding to everything that we make. To ensure that as we expand this category around meaty innovations, that they always remain tooth kind, if you like. What we want to do is raise awareness of the issue more generally. So that’s why I mentioned that we shared this research very widely, because we don’t want it to just be a Mars guideline, we’d love it if it was adopted more broadly across the industry as well. So from my perspective, the future of it is to spread the word far and wide, and hopefully see this guideline adopted by other retailers and other manufacturers.

Do you think then that specific things like how fragile dog’s teeth are not taken into account as much in the pet industry?

I think that the level of awareness of oral care issues in dogs just generally is, unfortunately, fairly low. So tooth fractures are one thing that they suffer from, but they also suffer from gum disease quite widely as well. So that’s a very common problem in dogs and because not all of them are getting the daily oral care routine that we give ourselves. And so, yeah, again, that’s a big part of my role is to try and help educate parents on oral health issues as a whole.