PetScored Editorial Team.

Independent dog and cat food scoring.

Deterministic five-sub-score rubric, published in fullVerification packets behind every public scoreRefuses to score what cannot be verifiedNo manufacturer money, no sponsored placementFDA recall and warning-letter matched against every brandTaurine hard-fail enforced in code, not editorial judgment

About the desk.

PetScored is an independent editorial operation that scores pet food using a single, public, deterministic rubric. The rubric is versioned. Every score is reconstructible from the methodology, the source records we read, and the rule events we publish on each scorecard. Attribution belongs to the publication, not to individuals - the same inputs produce the same score, every time, regardless of who reviewed the file.

The current live rubrics are Dog Food v1.0 and Cat Food v1.0. Both cover Nutrition Fit, Brand Trust, Ingredient Clarity, Sensitivity Risk, and Value, weighted to a composite. The cat rubric adds species-specific protein bands, a taurine requirement, and feline allergen weights. Both treat absence of evidence as absence of credit - the label does not prove what it does not say.

We take no money from manufacturers. We accept no free product, no sponsored placement, no paid review. Affiliate links on retail pages are disclosed and never affect scoring. Where a brand or formulation cannot be verified to the standard the rubric requires, the bag stays off the public scorecards - the refusal is itself a published artifact at /refused/. We argue with our own scores in writing; the editorial archive at /editorial/ records the cases where the rubric forced us to defend a number the marketing copy did not want us to give.

What the desk has produced.

178
Public scorecards
74
Brands covered
21
Verification packets
17
Editorial pieces
2
Live rubrics (dog, cat)
0
Dollars taken from manufacturers

How to read a PetScored byline.

Every public scorecard and every editorial piece carries the same byline: by the PetScored Editorial Team. We do not rotate named reviewers on and off scorecards, because the scores are not editorial opinions - they are the output of a deterministic rubric run against verified source records. Naming a single reviewer would misrepresent how the work is done.

If you want to argue with a score, the inputs are public on the scorecard, the rubric is at /methodology, the changelog is at /methodology/changelog, and the cases we refuse to score are at /refused. Corrections go to the desk: see /contact.