Sources of truth
Every score and ingredient claim on Sniff is traceable to one or more of the following:
- Manufacturer-published product pages and ingredient lists (primary source for every food).
- Open Pet Food Facts (ODbL, attributed) for European brand variants and barcode validation.
- AAFCO Official Publication for ingredient definitions and feeding-trial validation language.
- openFDA Animal & Veterinary recall database for recall history.
- WSAVA Global Nutrition Guidelines for breed-and-life-stage nutritional benchmarks.
- Peer-reviewed veterinary nutrition literature for ingredient-specific health claims.
We do not source from brand-funded blog posts, AI-generated review articles, or social-media claims. Where a manufacturer's published data conflicts with the actual bag, the bag wins — please submit a photo via our brand challenge process and we'll update the record.
Affiliate disclosure
Sniff earns affiliate commissions when readers buy products through outbound links. We use Amazon Associates, the Chewy affiliate program (via Impact), and direct-to-consumer programs from independent pet-food brands. Every retailer button on Sniff is labeled with FTC-compliant "paid link" language adjacent to the link — not buried in a footer.
Why we don't take brand money directly
We do not accept sponsored placements, paid rankings, manufacturer fees, "preferred partner" arrangements, or any other transaction in which a brand pays Sniff for editorial favorability. The 2024 FTC Final Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials prohibits paid-for rankings disguised as objective rankings — and we'd decline these on principle even if they were legal.
Score updates and corrections
Scores can change for three reasons:
- Reformulation. Pet food formulas change every 2–5 years per SKU. We re-check the top 500 foods weekly and the long tail quarterly. When a formula changes meaningfully, the score updates and the prior score is archived.
- New evidence. When peer-reviewed literature updates our understanding of a specific ingredient (e.g., FDA's ongoing DCM investigations into grain-free legume-heavy formulations), scoring weights are adjusted across the database. Changes are dated and documented in the methodology.
- Correction. When we get something wrong, we fix it — see the brand challenge process. Corrections are dated and visible on the product page.
What we will never do
- Generate scores, ingredient analyses, or recommendation text using AI prose. Every score is computed from the published rubric.
- Adjust a score in response to advertiser pressure, legal threat, or pre-publication review by a manufacturer.
- Hide or delete a low score after a brand complains. We update or annotate based on evidence, never on pressure.
- Sell, share, or rent reader data to manufacturers, marketing companies, or third parties.
Privacy and reader data
Dog profiles you build on Sniff stay yours. We use Plausible for aggregate analytics (no individual tracking, no cookies) and PostHog for product analytics (anonymized, opt-out available). We do not sell reader data, do not share dog profiles with manufacturers, and do not use reader data to influence which foods we recommend.
Updated
This page was last reviewed on November 22, 2026. Material changes are noted in a changelog.