@Carra-Pet Foods - good to see the new website. I have only had a very quick glance so far but I usually immediately look at the ingredient list of at least one item. I noticed that this product (Prins ProCare Standard) is not clearly labelled - there are no percentages and exact ingredients:
Grains, meat and animal by-products (poultry), vegetable by-products (400 mg Fructo-Oligosaccharide), oils and fats (0.5 % salmon oil), sugar, yeast. The only product on the Dog Food Directory is Prins Procare Sensible Grainfree. It would be useful if you could add your full range to it.
As this is the cold pressed food thread, I thought it would be useful to have a direct link to these products. The pressed foods appear to be the Pins Pro Care range on this page of the website. Is this correct?
Hi Dottie.
First of all answering your question regarding the compositions. There are two ways in which you can detail the composition of your products; either a detailed ingredient list as we're used to in the UK or what is called a clustered composition - this is where you list the food groups. Until recently Prins only sold their products in the Netherlands where there isn't the same demand from the consumer for detailed ingredients lists - as a result Prins always used a clustered composition*. They have however acknowledged that in countries such as the UK there is a demand from consumers to know detailed ingredients list and have begun the process of changing all their packaging over to a detailed composition. As I'll come onto in a moment Prins have multiple ranges of food, some of these have already moved over to the new detailed packaging however a couple of their older, best selling ranges will take a few months due to the volume of existing packaging still held in stock - the aim is for this to be completed by the new year though. As soon as the new packaging is fully in place, and hopefully to coincide with David's new algorithm that incorporates nutritional levels as well as ingredients, we'll be adding the rest of the products to the directory.
Regarding your 2nd question. The ProCare range is just 1 of 5 ranges of pressed food Prins offer and within each range they offer at least an adult, puppy, senior and hypoallergenic product:
1. ProCare - this was their original range.
https://www.prinspetfoods.com/dog/prins-procare2. ProCare Mini - this is essentially the same as the ProCare range but with a smaller sized kibble.
https://www.prinspetfoods.com/dog/prins-procare-mini3. ProCare Grainfree - this is their grain free range.
https://www.prinspetfoods.com/dog/prins-procare-grainfree4. ProCare Protection - this is their latest range which I mentioned earlier in the thread. This range is designed for larger, more active dogs that are more susceptible to heart, muscle, joint & digestive problems.
https://www.prinspetfoods.com/dog/prins-procare-protection5. ProCare Dieet - this is their veterinarian/diet products.
https://www.prinspetfoods.com/dog/prins-dietetic-feed-your-dogThe Grainfree, Protection and Diet ranges have all moved over to the detailed composition and as above, within the next few months we hope for all the ProCare & ProCare Mini products to have the same detailed compositions too. Just to give a bit of detail though - every food is 100% natural and with the exception of the hypoallergenic products which are either Duck or Lamb, all the other products are poultry based.
*Briefly just on the topic of ingredients lists and it is something I've touched on previously, I would urge people to study the analytical constituents of a food just as much as the ingredients lists and most importantly, look at the correlation between the two. An ingredients list on it's own is just a list of words, it doesn't tell you the quality of the ingredient that's used, nor does it tell you how much of the nutrients are left over after the production process. For example if you have a food that claims to have a very high meat content but a very modest crude protein level, ask yourself why - what quality of meat is being used? is the claimed meat percentage as straight forward as it seems or is the manufacturer using a rehydration factor? For those that may not know, there is a slight grey area when it comes to percentages of dehydrated ingredients. If you had a very small amount of a particular dehydrated ingredient in your product you're allowed to list the percentage of that ingredient as if it was in it's fresh form. Unfortunately there are some companies using this 'trick' for the main ingredients too which is borderline illegal.
I have a lot to do getting ready for PATS this coming weekend but next week I'll try to write a post regarding the term 'cold pressed" and claimed temperatures that pressed food is exposed to.