Offal for Dogs: Benefits, Types and How to Feed Organ Meat Safely

Offal is the ingredient that raises the most eyebrows, and the most questions, of anything I recommend as a canine nutritionist. I get it. Organ meat isn’t something most of us grew up eating, let alone feeding our dogs, so the uncertainty around what to use, how much, and why it matters is completely understandable.

That uncertainty is exactly what I want to clear up. Here, I’ll cover what offal offers your dog nutritionally, which organ meats to prioritise, how much to feed, and how to introduce it safely, so you can give your dog the benefit of this ingredient without any of the guesswork.

Yes, in most cases. Many of our Complete range meals contain offal and are formulated with organ meat already balanced in, so if you’re feeding offal dog food from a Complete range, provided you are feeding variety across the range you don’t need to add anything extra. Those Complete meal recipes without offal are nutritionally balanced using ingredients such as wheatgrass, kelp and pumpkin seeds to ensure they still meet FEDIAF standards naturally.

Our Pure 80:10:10 range follows the same principle in a slightly different format: 80% muscle meat, 10% ground bone and 10% offal, giving you full control if you prefer to build your dog’s diet from the individual components yourself.

Not every dog can eat it however, and that’s fine too. Our offal-free options exist specifically for dogs with sensitivities, so switching them out doesn’t mean compromising on the rest of the diet.

Offal spoils faster than muscle meat, so sourcing and handling it properly matters more here than almost anywhere else in a raw diet and is exactly why supplier standards matter. In practice:

• Buy from a trusted, DEFRA-approved supplier with clear traceability, not an unknown or unregulated source
• Keep it properly frozen until you’re ready to feed it, and thaw only what you need
• Feed within the timeframe recommended once thawed
• Wash hands, bowls and surfaces thoroughly after handling, as you would with any raw meat

At ProDog, all our meat, bone and offal come from DEFRA and British Farm Assured sources, sourced within the UK.

If your dog won’t eat offal raw at all, our dehydrated liver treats are a genuinely useful alternative that still count toward their weekly intake.