Smalls: Facts, Recalls & Verified Foods
Smalls is made by Smalls, founded 2017 — it scores green on 0 of 4 WSAVA-aligned criteria we track (1 red, 3 undisclosed), no FDA recalls on record, and 0 of the 10 Smalls foods we've verified carry an AAFCO feeding-trial statement.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — · 10 Smalls 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.
0 of 4 criteria confirmed yes · 1 confirmed no · 3 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.
Smalls claims its formulations were 'developed by a PhD in animal nutrition,' but that person is unnamed and there is no explicit statement they are full-time staff (could be a consultant). The named individual, Dr. Sarah Mitten, is described only as a veterinary advisor with no ACVN/ECVCN board certification or PhD credential attributed. Insufficient explicit evidence of a full-time qualified nutritionist on staff, so value=null.
source & quote
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Smalls uses third-party USDA-regulated kitchens rather than owning its own plant. cats.com references a USDA kitchen in Chicago; Forbes (fetched) states the company 'makes its meals in a commercial kitchen in New Jersey.' Both indicate contract/co-packer manufacturing.
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No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 20 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.
Count of PubMed-indexed records with the entity in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered). A reproducible FLOOR, not a total: affiliation strings vary and some research is published under institute names. research_entity_affiliation is recorded only for manufacturers with a dedicated pet-nutrition research arm; brand_affiliation.count is null where the brand name is an ambiguous homonym.
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 Smalls
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
Smalls
source
Smalls is an independent, venture-backed DTC startup (co-founded and led by CEO Matt Michaelson; raised a $19M round in 2023) with no acquiring parent found. No distinct legal operating-entity name was verified in fetched sources beyond the brand name 'Smalls'.
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Founded
2017
source
Both fetched sources (cats.com interview and Forbes) state 'launched in 2017.' Some third-party directories (Crunchbase/Tracxn) list 2016; 2017 is the year supported by fetched sources.
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Headquarters
New York, NY
source
BBB business profile lists a New York, NY address. Consistent with Forbes/cats.com describing the company's origins in New York; manufacturing kitchens are separately located (Chicago/New Jersey).
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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 Smalls.
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 Smalls's labels
Computed directly from the official-label data we've extracted for this brand — never estimated.
Foods verified
10
0 dog · 10 cat
Feeding-trial validated
0
of 10 (0%)
Formulated to meet
0
AAFCO paper calculation
Label transparency
37%
avg. fields disclosed
The foods
Foods from Smalls we've verified
Every one links to its own Verified Label — guaranteed analysis, AAFCO statement, and (where priced) cost per day.