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Orijen Puppy package official product image via Amazon

Orijen · brand facts & recall history →

Puppy

Dry food · puppy dogs

A formulated-to-meet, chicken-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 26% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 95% (you feed fewer cups) — $2.50 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-12

$106.99 · 23.5 lb $2.50/day as of 2026-07-12 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2 cupsper day $2.50per day 42 daysbag lasts passes 2 fit checks ↓

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № ORIJEN
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 43.2%label: 38% min higher than 99% of dry foods
Fat 22.7%label: 20% min higher than 97% of dry foods
Fiber 6.8%label: 6% max higher than 89% of dry foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈18.2%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: Ca 1.3% · P 1% · EPA 0.2% · DHA 0.2% · Ω-3 0.8% 1.30 : 1ratio, as fed within the AAFCO adult range (1:1 – 2:1)

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 475 kcal/cup3960 kcal/kg denser than 95% of dry foods (median 388) — you feed fewer cups
Daily serving2 cups
Cost per day$2.50
23.5-lb bag lasts42 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $2.54 — cheaper than 26% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Formulated to meet · all_life_stages
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · turkey · chicken liver · salmon · whole herring
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Orijen, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 13 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official)· price: Amazon, 2026-07-12 · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label

The fit

For your dog, specifically

Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.

✓
Validated for adult dogsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
✓
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your dog — shown here for reference.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Chicken, turkey, chicken liver, salmon, whole herring, dehydrated chicken, dehydrated turkey, dehydrated sardine, dehydrated chicken liver, dehydrated egg, whole red lentils, whole pinto beans, chicken fat, pollock oil, whole navy beans, whole green lentils, whole chickpeas, whole peas, turkey giblets (liver, heart, gizzard), eggs, natural chicken flavor, dried apple pomace, chicken heart, salt, vitamin E supplement, whole pumpkin, whole butternut squash, collard greens, whole pears, whole apples, whole cranberries, dried kelp, zinc proteinate, mixed tocopherols (preservative), niacin, thiamine mononitrate, calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, folic acid, vitamin B12 supplement, copper proteinate, dried Bacillus coagulans fermentation product, dried chicory root, turmeric, sarsaparilla root, althea root, rosehips, juniper berries, citric acid (preservative), rosemary extract

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Champion states foods are crafted in 'our' kitchens; Orijen is manufactured in Alberta, Canada and Kentucky, USA by Champion (its own DogStar/NorthStar kitchens) per en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orijen.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

Champion's own About page claims 'Ph.D.-level nutrition experts' on staff. No individual is named and the specific field of the PhD is not stated; the 'Ph.D.-level' wording is the company's own characterization.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 5 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.

Peer-reviewed research None found

A reproducible PubMed search (author-affiliation field, animal/pet-domain filtered) returns zero indexed papers for this brand name. Not proof no research exists — only that none is PubMed-indexed under this exact name.

source →
Parent company Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare) ↗ Founded 2005 ↗ Headquarters / plant Alberta, Canada ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Orijen brand page →