Benyfit Natural had one of the busiest stands on Friday at Crufts with a special guest appearance of Love Island winner Jack Fincham.  That certainly generated a whole load of social media activity for the brand!

Eventually Pet Trade Xtra got to speak with Greg Van Praagh who told us the story behind the creation of Benyfit Natural which included his Mum getting upset that her pavlova freezer had a deer in it and a local pet shop asking to buy some of the food they were producing for their own dogs. They were two of the kick starts that lead to Benyfit Natural being born in March 2014 as an organization.

In 2015 they re-branded with the fully recyclable tub, using recycled material. “We had the Working Dog range and then in 2016 we brought out the 80-10-10 which is a complementary product.” Explained Greg. “It's not complete. It's 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 10% offal, so it's more about the ancient diets the prey model but it's not technically complete against FEDIAF’s guidelines. Everyone's got to be very clear about what a complete meal is and what a complementary meal is.”

When it comes to making a complete meal Greg went on to say: “We balance it using supplementary ingredients; wild yam, cleavers, nettle, alfalfa, spirulina, turmeric in some not all basically to make sure that you have all of the levels of manganese, iodine, vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin D, zinc, copper, riboflavin. So you're going to get some from your vegetables, you're going to get some from your meat, you're going to get the copper out of your liver and then you balance it because there's going to be some deficiencies in that and you use these other things which are natural to get that nutrition and those vitamins in there. To get it balanced so that it's inside the tolerances that FEDIAF stipulates for a complete and nutritionally balanced meal for your dog.”

Regarding the ongoing debates about raw feeding vs kibble vs wet feed Greg says we should all calm down. “We are an inclusive brand, it's about inclusion. I'm not going to vilify somebody for feeding kibble. I'm not going to vilify them for feeding wet. Everybody needs to just calm down. The large pet food manufacturing companies aren't out there trying to kill dogs. That's bad for business.”