The company using blockchain technology to make better dog food

We love our pets but how much do we really think about the food we give them? Martin Friel speaks to the co-founders of Marleybones about knowing exactly where the ingredients come from

Joesphine Bager (left) and Mikala Skov show off their pooch posh nosh (Marleybones)

We are known as a nation of pet lovers and that love is taking ever more extreme forms as humanisation of our pets continues apace. They are being dressed in clothes, subjected to detailed conversations they have no hope of understanding, being groomed to a human standard. Some of us are even using apps to monitor our pet’s daily activity and “goals”, and setting up “play dates” with other pets.

In this context, a pet food brand that only uses only human grade ingredients and uses blockchain technology to track and verify the welfare and environmental credentials of those ingredients, doesn’t seem quite so extreme.

Which is why it’s worth taking a second look at Marleybones, a company that aims to bring greater quality and transparency to the dog food sector. The concept, while high tech in parts, is pretty straightforward.

It’s a high-end dog food product that uses human grade ingredients, sourced from suppliers with the highest environmental and welfare standards, sold on a subscription basis and delivered to your door. But what sets it apart is a feature whereby customers can verify the claims and the credentials of both Marleybones and its supply chain using blockchain technology.

Set up earlier this year by co-founders Josephine Bager and Mikala Skov, Marleybones is only the latest entrant to a very crowded dog food market. But the pair are convinced that not only are they right in seeking to improve (and prove) the quality of dog food, they believe there are many more people just like them out there, willing to go the extra mile for their dog’s nourishment and health.

And it all started, appropriately enough, with a dog, Bager’s English cocker spaniel Marley.

“I moved to London four years ago [from her native Denmark] and brought Marley with me. But we were having many issues with him. He was underweight and couldn’t digest the food he was getting so we took him to the vet, but we couldn’t find a solution. So, I started researching nutrition,” says Bager.

She was shocked at what she found. Not only do the current regulations covering dog food ingredients permit everything from rotten ingredients to feathers and hair, she found that even the high-quality food was packed in plastic and was unsustainable in its ingredient sourcing. But most of all, it was an inability to verify the ingredients and their provenance that frustrated her the most.

“I’ve always been quite passionate about what I eat and where my food comes from but there is no transparency in the pet food industry. That’s when I thought it would be possible to combine quality with transparency.”

This lack of knowledge about what is actually in dog food is shared by the majority of Brits. A recent study found that 62 per cent of dog owners have no idea what they are feeding their dog, which is completely at odds with the growing obsession with our own diet.

So, the pair reasoned that other pet-parents would be just as concerned and motivated to change this. And when you factor in the fact that the UK pet food market is worth about £3bn annually, this starts to look less like a crackpot idea and more like good business sense.

Moving from idea to reality hasn’t been easy though, particularly in the sourcing of suppliers, the kind of suppliers who would be willing to submit themselves to the cold scrutiny of blockchain technology.

“A lot of them initially said they could easily do it but when we asked for proof, they completely shut down and we never heard from them again,” says Bager.

In the pet food market, a lot of companies are claiming that their chickens are free range, but there is a lot of greenwashing going on

Despite this apparent dearth of ethical suppliers, there are a huge number of pet food brands out there claiming to have organic or free-range ingredients but even when those claims are true, there can still be issues for the environmentally conscious buyer.

“A lot of the UK based food companies say they have high welfare or organic suppliers, but they go to the cheapest supplier, wherever they may be in the world,” says Bager.

This of course creates its own sustainability issues and to avoid the same trap, the pair set out to ensure that not only would their own product be as environmentally sound as possible (the website claims that all packaging is sustainably sourced, plant-based and recyclable), but that it would be entirely sourced within the UK from suppliers who were as environmentally and welfare conscious as Marleybones.

Packington Farm, the farm that supplies the chicken used in their dog food, is a good example. The owners of the farm claim to use renewable energy but Marleybones wanted more than reassurance. They wanted proof, which they received in the form of a certificate that was then uploaded on to the blockchain.

All their suppliers are subjected the same scrutiny with their evidence loaded on to the blockchain which customers can access via a QR code on the packaging. While that could be seen as a hi-tech gimmick, Skov says that customers regularly access the supply chain credentials.

“The majority of our customers investigate it,” she says.

“In the pet food market, a lot of companies are claiming that their chickens are free range, but there is a lot of greenwashing going on, so people are much more curious [about provenance] than they have been before.

“Being transparent about ingredients is what got the whole idea rolling and the blockchain shows a timeline view of ingredients, where they come from and the eco credentials of our suppliers. So you can understand the impact of that individual meal.”

And while this is a growing market, the pair are pretty comfortable that the big brands won’t be able to replicate their idea.

“A lot of them are focusing on their own brand and not on the supply chain and that is where the real welfare and environmental impact is,” says Skov.

And it is the difficulty in getting that supply chain to verify it’s credentials that will act, they believe, as a protective barrier to their young business: “Nobody is doing the same thing as us and we are the first to have a completely open supply chain with 100 per cent British ingredients,” adds Skov.

But for the moment, they are in no hurry to take on the big boys. They are focused on growing the business organically, without any external investment, and while they say they have had interest from some of the large supermarket brands, they are not quite ready to take that leap, preferring to focus on nurturing their subscription model instead.

And if the current condition of Marley (who was an active and vocal participant throughout the interview) is anything to go by, Bager and Skov just might be on to something.