Wellness: Facts, Recalls & Verified Foods
Wellness is made by Wellness Pet Company (formerly WellPet), owned by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P., founded 1997 — it scores green on 2 of 4 WSAVA-aligned criteria we track (0 red, 2 undisclosed), 1 FDA recall on record, and 4 of the 163 Wellness foods we've verified carry an AAFCO feeding-trial statement.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — · 163 Wellness 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.
Official pages refer only generically to 'veterinarians, animal nutritionists, and food scientists.' No individual named with a board-certified credential (DACVN/ACVN/ECVCN) or PhD in animal nutrition found in fetched sources; set null per rule.
source & quote
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Company owns and operates its own plants. (Wikipedia lists Arkansas/Minnesota/Netherlands — state naming differs by source, but both confirm company-owned manufacturing, not co-packers.)
source & quote
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4 of 250 verified labels in our corpus carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.
source
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 Wellness
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
Wellness Pet Company (formerly WellPet), owned by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P.
source
Clearlake (private equity) acquired WellPet in Nov 2020; WellPet renamed the Wellness Pet Company in Dec 2021.
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Founded
1997
source
1997 is the launch of the Wellness dog food line.
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Headquarters
Tewksbury, Massachusetts, USA
source
Wikipedia also lists Tewksbury, MA.
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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 Wellness.
Wellness Complete Health Super5Mix Large Breed Puppy (15 lb, 30 lb, and 5 oz sample bags; best-by Jan 9-11, 2013)
Precautionary recall after notification of Salmonella at the co-packing plant in Gaston, SC (the 2012 Gaston Salmonella event); no Wellness lot tested positive
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 Wellness's labels
Computed directly from the official-label data we've extracted for this brand — never estimated.
Foods verified
163
80 dog · 83 cat
Feeding-trial validated
4
of 163 (2%)
Formulated to meet
8
AAFCO paper calculation
Label transparency
50%
avg. fields disclosed
The foods
Foods from Wellness we've verified
Every one links to its own Verified Label — guaranteed analysis, AAFCO statement, and (where priced) cost per day.