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2026 Cat Food Study

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Here's everything you asked for from our 2026 Cat Food Study: the full report plus both Clean Sixteen lists.

GET A PDF COPY OF THIS REPORT (PDF)
Clean Sixteen — Dry Clean Sixteen — Wet

What we found when we tested 100 cat foods

  • Lead was detected in 99% of products, cadmium in 96%, arsenic in 94%. Detected means it's there, not that it's dangerous on its own. The question is which foods have the least, and that's what the Clean Sixteen lists show.
  • Protein mattered most for meeting our standard: 84.8% of poultry foods did, vs. 25.7% of fish and seafood foods.
  • Fish and seafood foods had about 18x the mercury of other foods.
  • For lead specifically, dry food had about 3x more than wet or air-dried food.
  • In 35 of 100 foods, the meat or fish listed first wasn't really the main ingredient. Plant ingredients made up most of the top ten.

One practical takeaway: read past the first ingredient. If your cat eats a fish-based food exclusively, consider rotating in another protein. The report explains why.

Source: Clean Label Project, Cat Food Category Report (2026). 100 products, 62 brands, tested by an independent, ISO 17025–accredited laboratory for more than 122 contaminants. Results are compared within the category; they are not a safety determination for any individual product.