Nutro: Facts, Recalls & Verified Foods
Nutro is made by Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare), founded 1926 — it scores green on 2 of 4 WSAVA-aligned criteria we track (0 red, 2 undisclosed), no FDA recalls on record, and 0 of the 84 Nutro foods we've verified carry an AAFCO feeding-trial statement.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — · 84 Nutro foods in our corpus
The scorecard
WSAVA-aligned criteria
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association's nutrition guidelines suggest four questions to ask any pet food maker before you buy. Most "best dog food" sites skip straight to ingredient vibes and star ratings — we publish the actual answers instead, each sourced, or marked honestly undisclosed when we can't confirm it.
2 of 4 criteria confirmed yes · 0 confirmed no · 2 undisclosed. Undisclosed is common, especially for smaller brands — it means we couldn't confirm an answer from a public source, not that the answer is unfavorable.
Nutro's fetched FAQ discusses quality controls but does not state any nutritionist credentials (no PhD/board-certified vet nutritionist named). Part of Mars Pet Nutrition system, but no Nutro-specific fetched source confirms a qualified nutritionist on staff, so null.
source
Nutro FAQ (nutro.com/faqs) adds: 'We have two dry pet food manufacturing facilities for NUTRO products located in Henderson, North Carolina, and Victorville, California.' Some products are co-packed abroad (SO SIMPLE trays made in Thailand per the FAQ), so it is not exclusively self-owned, but dry food is made in Mars-owned US plants — primary answer 'owns' with minor co-pack exception.
source & quote
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No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 3 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.
658 PubMed-indexed papers carry "Waltham Petcare Science Institute (Mars)" in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered) — a reproducible floor, not a total.
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These four checks come from WSAVA's global nutrition guidelines for evaluating a pet food manufacturer — not our own opinion score. Read our full methodology →
The company
Who makes Nutro
Ownership and history, each sourced independently — private-label and co-packed brands often hide the actual manufacturer behind the name on the bag.
Parent company
Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare)
source
Mars acquired Nutro in 2007; The Nutro Company operates under Mars Petcare US.
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Founded
1926
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Brand founded 1926 (celebrated its centenary per petfoodindustry.com).
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Headquarters
Franklin, Tennessee, U.S.
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Also confirmed on nutro.com/faqs: 'Our headquarters is in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville.'
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The safety record
FDA recall history
Joined from the FDA's own Animal & Veterinary recall feed (2019–present) plus curated pre-2019 records — the same live-checked feed as our full recall database, filtered to Nutro.
Join of data/recalls.json (FDA Animal & Veterinary recall feed, 2019-present) + data/recalls_historical.json. This is NOT a complete lifetime recall history; recalls predating 2019 (or absent from the FDA datatable) are not represented unless curated in recalls_historical.json.
The corpus
What we've verified from Nutro's labels
Computed directly from the official-label data we've extracted for this brand — never estimated.
Foods verified
84
84 dog
Feeding-trial validated
0
of 84 (0%)
Formulated to meet
0
AAFCO paper calculation
Label transparency
3%
avg. fields disclosed
The foods
Foods from Nutro we've verified
Every one links to its own Verified Label — guaranteed analysis, AAFCO statement, and (where priced) cost per day.