Bramble Wins Best In Show at Global Pet Expo for Plant-Based Dog Food

Bramble, the plant-based fresh dog food brand named after the once longest-living dog on record, took Best In Show at the Global Pet Expo's New Products Showcase on April 2 in Orlando, Florida, claiming first place in the show's most competitive category, Dog Food and Dog Treats, and third place in Natural Products.

For owners of high-drive dogs who have watched the plant-based pet food space with skepticism, the award carries more weight than a marketing campaign. The Global Pet Expo draws buyers, distributors, and pet-industry professionals by the thousands, and a Best In Show win typically accelerates distribution deals and shelf placement at major chains. Bramble becomes the first plant-based fresh dog food to claim that distinction at the show.

The label question is where things get substantive. Bramble's formulas meet AAFCO's Dog Nutrient Profiles for Adult Life Maintenance under the "formulated to meet" standard, not through AAFCO-substantiated feeding trials. That distinction is meaningful: a product labeled "formulated to meet" has cleared a nutrient-profile analysis, while one that reads "animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate" has been run through a minimum 26-week live-animal trial. Bramble's independent feeding trial, conducted by Kelly Swanson, a professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois, operates outside that AAFCO pathway but provides live-animal data the label itself cannot.

Swanson's first-of-its-kind trial tested Bramble's two human-grade plant-based formulas and found digestibility comparable to premium animal-based diets, with improvements in gut health markers and significant reductions in triglycerides and cholesterol. The study's amino acid findings are the number that matters most for anyone running a high-output dog: Bramble's vegan formulas contained more taurine than the animal-based control diet, and indispensable amino acid digestibilities were high across the board. That directly addresses the most persistent clinical concern about plant-based diets for active dogs, namely that methionine, cysteine, and taurine levels might fall short of what a hard-working metabolism demands.

"One thing to remember is that animals don't have ingredient requirements, they have nutrient requirements," Swanson said. "As long as they're consuming the essential nutrients in the correct amounts and ratios, dogs can be vegan, vegetarian, or meat-eaters."

Any plant-based food deserves three checks before it goes into a working dog's bowl: caloric density expressed as kilocalories of metabolizable energy per kilogram (lower-density foods require larger portions to sustain a high-output dog), the full amino acid panel including taurine and methionine, and whether the food was substantiated by AAFCO feeding trials or only formulated to meet a profile. Independent trials like Swanson's add a layer of live-animal evidence that profile-only certifications lack, but peer-review status and sample size still matter before treating any single study as settled science.

At the expo, Bramble also announced new kidney-friendly recipes formulated with reduced protein and phosphorus for dogs managing chronic kidney disease, a therapeutic niche long dominated by animal-based prescription lines. A plant-based brand pressing into clinical nutrition categories, with a Best In Show ribbon and a peer-reviewed digestibility study behind it, is a different proposition than the vegan pet food novelties that cycled through trade shows a decade ago. Retailers and veterinary clinics tracking those distribution deals will make that case concrete soon enough.