Freshpet Becomes First Dog Food to Earn Clean Label Certification, Purity Award

Freshpet, Inc. (NASDAQ: FRPT) said its entire U.S. and Canadian product line cleared independent testing and earned certification from the nonprofit Clean Label Project (CLP), along with CLP’s Purity Award. The company distributed the announcement through its press release and blog on Feb. 12, 2026, and amplified the news on social channels.

Certification testing began in early 2025 and targeted more than 100 potential contaminants, Freshpet said. CLP’s evaluations focused on environmental and industrial contaminants that often do not appear on labels, with specific examples cited by the company including heavy metals, pesticides, BPA, and acrylamide. Freshpet also said its production processes were examined for ingredient quality, transparency around ingredient sourcing, and manufacturing and safety practices.

Freshpet framed the recognition as validation of its long-standing positioning on fresh ingredients and safety. “When it comes to feeding our pets, we all want the same thing: food we can trust,” the company wrote in its blog post about the process. The blog added that “this recognition is more than a badge. It’s a confirmation of something we’ve believed in since day one: Real, fresh ingredients prepared with care can – and do – meet the highest levels of safety and transparency.” Freshpet also used the heading “The Freshpet promise” and emphasized ongoing commitments to ingredient integrity: “Ingredient integrity isn’t something we ‘achieve’ once; it’s something we recommit to every single day.”

CLP awarded Freshpet the Purity Award, a distinction the company says is reserved for the top third of performers in a product category. Freshpet’s announcement and syndicated distributions describe the company as “the first and only pet food brand to be Clean Label Project Certified and have its entire product line recognized with the organization's Purity Award.” That “first and only” wording appears across company materials and PR distributions as an assertion from Freshpet; CLP confirmation and lab-level data were not included in the material Freshpet circulated.

For dog owners and community retailers, the practical value is straightforward: a major fresh-food brand is backing product-safety claims with third-party testing that addresses contaminants such as heavy metals and pesticides. At the same time, important details remain unpublished. Freshpet has not provided SKU-level lists of which recipes were tested, the laboratories that performed analyses, raw test results, or the cadence for recertification. Freshpet’s social post summed the announcement simply: “We're proud to share that all Freshpet recipes have earned @cleanlabelproject's Certification and the Purity Award for ingredient quality and” (truncated).

Ask Freshpet for the CLP certificates and lab reports if you want product-level proof. Watch packaging and online product pages for CLP Certification marks and look for follow-up posts from Freshpet and CLP that specify methodology and scope. For now, the announcement raises Freshpet’s kibble cred among owners seeking lower-contaminant options, while leaving space for independent verification and more granular data to fully vet the claim.