Look beyond the headline. Check the funding. Check the data.
If you saw the headlines — or caught the segment on the news — here's what you need to know before you panic.
You may have seen the headlines this week. Maybe a friend sent you a link. Maybe you caught a segment on the news. A study claimed that dry dog food contains alarming levels of heavy metals — lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium — and that fresh food is dramatically safer. The phones have been ringing here, and we understand why.
When something like this hits the news cycle, the worry is real and the questions are valid. So let's talk through it honestly, because there's quite a bit the headlines left out.
Start here: who's behind the study?
The organization that published this research, the Clean Label Project, operates a paid certification program. Brands pay them for a seal of approval.
At the very end of their alarming dog food study — right after the scary numbers — they list which brands carry that certification. For dog food, there is, at the time of publishing, exactly one: a maker of fresh and refrigerated pet food. The same category their study declares the winner.
Although a financial interest doesn't automatically make a finding wrong — it does mean the finding deserves a harder look. And this one doesn't hold up well under scrutiny.
This is a good rule of thumb for any scary pet health headline: before you change what your dog is eating, ask who funded the research and who profits from the conclusion.
The number that drove the headlines — and why it's misleading
The study compares heavy metal levels between dry kibble and fresh dog food using something called parts per billion, or ppb. And on the surface, the gap looks terrifying. Dry food showed up to 21 times more lead than fresh food.
Here's what that number leaves out: fresh dog food is roughly 75–80% water. Dry kibble is about 7–8% water.
When you measure concentration without accounting for that difference, you're not comparing apples to apples. It's like dissolving a teaspoon of salt in a cup of water versus dissolving that same teaspoon in a gallon of water — the gallon tastes far less salty, but it contains exactly the same amount of salt. Measuring concentration without accounting for how much water is in the food tells you very little about how much of something a dog is actually consuming.
The scientifically correct way to compare two foods with different moisture levels is to remove the water from both and measure what's left — what food scientists call a dry matter basis comparison. The Pet Food Institute called this out in their formal response to the study, describing moisture normalization as a basic requirement of valid cross-format testing that the Clean Label Project simply didn't do.
When you apply that correction to their own numbers, that headline-grabbing "21 times more lead" becomes roughly 5 times — a very different story, but not the end of it.
It also matters which foods they tested
The study tested 79 products but doesn't disclose which ones produced the alarming results. That's a significant omission, because heavy metals don't distribute evenly across all dog foods. They concentrate in specific ingredients.
For instance, ground bone is a known source of lead and cadmium. Eggshell, depending on where it comes from, can contain lead levels as high as 8,000 ppb. Low-quality or unvetted fish meal is associated with mercury. These ingredients are common in many dry and freeze-dried foods — particularly as sources of calcium.
If you selected your test samples specifically from foods that contain those ingredients from unknown or low-cost sourcing, you'd find exactly the outcome this study found. Without knowing which specific products drove the results, there's no way for any responsible manufacturer to respond — and no way for you to know whether your dog's actual food is part of the story.
Where freeze-dried fits in
One thing worth noting: freeze-dried food landed in the middle of the study's rankings — worse than fresh, better than kibble. And there's a reason for that.
Many freeze-dried pet foods rely on ground bone and eggshell as their calcium sources. They're common, affordable, and found in a lot of premium-looking products. They're also the ingredients most associated with lead and cadmium in pet food.
Our freeze-dried food, Dream Wild, is different — and this is something we're genuinely proud of. Instead of ground bone or conventional eggshell, Dream Wild uses certified sea minerals as its calcium source. Every batch comes with a certification. It costs more. We do it anyway, because we've always known that calcium sourcing is one of the places where heavy metal risk hides in pet food, and we decided a long time ago that we weren't going to cut that corner.
What about our foods specifically?
We've tested our foods for heavy metals many times, and the results have consistently given us confidence in our sourcing decisions. That's not a coincidence — it's a direct result of the ingredient choices we make.
We don't use ground bone. We're deliberate about calcium sourcing across our entire line. When we use fish meal, we've sourced it from the same supplier and the same farm for close to two decades, because we know their practices and we've verified them. That kind of consistency only happens when you're not chasing the lowest price on the open commodity market every production run.
Our dog foods have also completed AAFCO feeding trials — the gold standard for demonstrating that a food actually delivers real nutrition to real dogs. Every formula that went through a trial passed on its first attempt, with bloodwork results that exceeded AAFCO guidelines significantly. You can read more on our vets page.
We'll continue testing our foods. We'll continue holding our suppliers accountable. And we'll continue choosing ingredients that cost more when there's a good reason to — because that's what we'd want if we were the ones buying the food.
The bottom line
The concern behind this study isn't entirely manufactured — heavy metals in pet food ingredients are a real topic that responsible manufacturers should take seriously. We do. But this particular study was designed and presented in a way that produces maximum alarm with minimum scientific rigor, and it lands its conclusions at the feet of the one brand that paid for the certification from the company running the study.
Your dog is lucky to have someone who cares enough to ask questions. We just want to make sure you're getting the full picture when you do.
As always, if you have questions about what's in your dog's food, we're here.
If you found this interesting, check out these related stories:
What You Should Know About Grains In Pet Food
There's More to Your Pet's Food Than Just the Label