The pet health supplement industry is entering a new stage of “standardization + scientification”: driven by both scientific research and quality benchmarking.

In 2026, China’s pet economy continued to expand, with its market size exceeding 300 billion yuan. At this critical juncture of the industry’s transformation from unregulated growth to high-quality development, pet health products, as a crucial part of scientific pet care, are undergoing profound structural changes. Standardization, normalization, and scientific approach have become the constant themes of industry development, with research institutions, e-commerce platforms, and leading brands jointly driving the industry towards a new level of compliance and health.

I. Scientific Foundation: Filling Standard Gaps and Solving the Problem of False Efficacy Labeling For a long time, the pet health product market has suffered from pain points such as overly generalized efficacy claims, inefficient use of raw materials, and weak basic scientific research. Institutions such as the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences Pet Innovation Research Institute have provided the industry with an important public technical foundation through industry-academia collaboration. The institute’s team pioneered quantitative group standards, establishing an evaluation system for functional products such as pet coat enhancement, using instruments to quantify core indicators such as coat brightness and tensile strength, ending the industry’s long-standing reliance on subjective qualitative claims in advertising. Furthermore, relying on a self-operated laboratory with nearly 500 standardized experimental dogs and cats, a closed loop has been achieved, encompassing the entire process from formula development to pre-market feeding, safety, and efficacy verification, effectively addressing the compliance dilemma faced by small and medium-sized brands due to a lack of authoritative data support.

Meanwhile, the barriers between traditional agricultural resources and pet consumption resources are being broken down. For example, Shandong province has mastered the technology for the resource utilization of rabbit slaughter by-products, transforming rabbit meat and offal into highly palatable pet food ingredients. This not only enhances product efficacy but also extends the added value of the upstream breeding industry chain, achieving industrial synergy and mutual empowerment.

II. Platform Standardization: Building a “Golden Selection” System to Reshape Consumer Trust Mechanisms Faced with the current situation of falsely labeled ingredients and efficacy and inconsistent quality in the market, e-commerce platforms have taken the lead in establishing quality benchmarks. JD Health released its first platform-based enterprise standard for pet nutrition products, “JD Health Pet Nutrition Golden Selection,” and joined forces with nearly 20 well-known brands such as MAG and Red Dog to establish the “Good Nutrition Quality Alliance.” This standard systematically screens six core categories of pet products, including goat milk powder, fish oil, probiotics, and chondroitin, based on five dimensions: authenticity, completeness, purity, verification, and labeling. It requires that the actual added amount of core nutrients must meet or exceed the labeled value and mandates the provision of authoritative CMA/CNAS testing reports.

To protect consumer rights, the platform implements a dynamic management mechanism, offering a “100% compensation for counterfeit products” and “money-back guarantee if the pet doesn’t like it” service commitment for products bearing the “Gold Selection” label. This initiative marks a shift in the pet nutrition industry from a “concept war” to a “standard war,” using transparent and credible data endorsement to help high-quality brands achieve healthy growth through “high quality at a high price.”

III. In-depth Segmentation: Full Lifecycle Care and Emotional Value Shaping As scientific pet care concepts gain popularity, the demand for pet health products is becoming increasingly refined.

Age-Specific and Stage-Specific Precision Care: Nestlé Purina’s Purina brand, Pro Plan, proposes the “Pioneering Nutrition” concept, emphasizing that immune health is crucial throughout a pet’s life. For young pets, a colostrum formula rich in immunoglobulins is offered to build a solid foundation for health. For adult and senior pets, the focus is on gut microbiota balance and joint anti-aging. Experts from China Agricultural University point out that scientific feeding should follow the logic of “laying a foundation in childhood, maintaining stability in adulthood, and preventing decline in old age,” with specific nutritional intervention programs tailored to different life stages.

**Localized Scenarios Innovation:** Addressing the common problems faced by indoor cats in Chinese cities, such as low exercise levels, obesity, and hairballs, the brand has developed a special indoor cat food fortified with triple dietary fiber. This promotes gastrointestinal motility, gently removes hairballs, and controls stool odor and body shape, reflecting a localized innovation path of “global research, Chinese solutions.”

**Probiotics Market Explosion and Standardization:** Data shows that the domestic pet probiotic market exceeded 6.5 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to climb to over 8 billion yuan in 2026. The market is showing a competitive trend towards highly active strains, scientifically formulated prebiotics, and age-specific formulas for dogs. Brands like hyfly, Jinian, and Brady Yeast have secured top rankings in customer reviews thanks to their use of imported top-tier strains, freeze-drying technology, and authoritative third-party testing data. The industry is accelerating its transformation from “single-function antidiarrheal” to “comprehensive gut health,” with convenient designs such as capsule formulations and individual packaging becoming key elements in enhancing user experience.

The integration of traditional Chinese medicine and emotional value: Some companies are experimenting with incorporating mild herbs like hawthorn, poria cocos, and cassia seed into pet functional foods, achieving gentle conditioning through “natural solutions.” Simultaneously, marketing is focusing on the emotional value of pets, using concepts like anxiety relief and emotional soothing to cater to the refined and emotionally driven pet-owning needs of contemporary young people.

IV. Challenges and Prospects: Human-Pet Co-governance and Regulatory Adaptation

Despite the industry’s strong growth momentum, it still faces deep-seated challenges. Current feed regulations and ingredient lists are largely based on the logic of low-cost production from economically important animals, which is misaligned with the needs of pets for health, longevity, and functional care, resulting in slow progress in including new functional additives such as hyaluronic acid in the list. Furthermore, the responsibilities for pet-friendly management in public spaces remain unclear, and the conflict between human and pet resources has not yet been systematically resolved.

In the future, the core competitiveness of the pet health supplement industry will shift from technological competition to the output of emotional value and scientific data support. With the continuous improvement of the regulatory system and the sustained increase in R&D investment, companies with independent R&D capabilities, strict quality control systems, and standardized evaluation capabilities will stand out in the new round of competition, propelling China’s pet industry towards a new stage of compliant, healthy, and high-quality development.