This investigation started with a tin of kitten milk. Dog Desk Animal Action needed Royal Canin Babycat Milk for kittens in in Turkey and we could not get it. Retailer after retailer showed the specialist milk replacer as out of stock. For an ordinary consumer product that would have been an inconvenience. For a neonatal kitten that may depend upon milk replacer as its principal source of nutrition, it is rather more urgent.
We started searching beyond the suppliers we would normally use and that was when things became more complicated. The product appeared on unfamiliar websites and marketplace listings, sometimes at dramatically different prices. Royal Canin’s UK website was listing 300g at £12.99 while Royal Canin Turkey was listing the same quantity at 2,100 TL (£32). Elsewhere we encountered prices considerably higher again. Finding somebody advertising a tin was therefore only part of the problem. We also needed to decide whether we were comfortable buying it from them.
That is an uncomfortable position for any animal rescuer. An animal needs feeding, the product you trust is unavailable through the suppliers you trust and other sellers appear to have what you need. Do you buy it? How do you establish where their stock came from? How do you know it has travelled through the legitimate supply chain and, ultimately, how do you know that what is inside the package is what the label says it is?
We initially thought we were dealing with a shortage and an unusually expensive imported product. Then, while trying to establish which sellers we could trust, we discovered that Royal Canin Turkey itself provides consumers with a formal procedure for checking whether products are genuine. For dry foods, customers with authenticity concerns are asked to provide information about the seller and proof of purchase, photographs of the complete packaging, expiry and product code information and the QR barcode. Royal Canin products in Turkey have also been supplied with a holographic QR authentication system intended to help consumers verify them.
That changed the direction of our search. An authentication system does not mean that every product bought outside an authorised retailer is counterfeit and it does not tell us how widespread counterfeiting is. But it raised an obvious question. Why was this level of authentication necessary?
We started looking. What we found showed that concern about counterfeit dog and cat food in Turkey existed well before our search for kitten milk and went considerably beyond individual consumers wondering whether a bag of food looked or smelled different.
In November 2024, Turkey’s Pet Food Association, PETFA, held a Dog and Cat Food Feed Safety Workshop in Ankara. According to the association, the workshop was organised against a background of increasing complaints about counterfeit pet food in the market. Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Ministry of Trade participated alongside manufacturers, importers, exporters, veterinarians and other industry representatives. That does not tell us how much counterfeit food was circulating, but it establishes that concern about it had become sufficiently significant to bring government and industry together.
Six months later, authorities found something considerably more tangible than consumer complaints. In May 2025, the İzmir Provincial Gendarmerie searched a warehouse in Develi in the Menderes district during an investigation conducted by the Menderes Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. According to the official account, information had been received that imported dog and cat foods were being counterfeited at the premises.
Officers reported seizing 4,680 kg of counterfeit Royal Canin-branded feed, 2,200 kg of counterfeit Purina-branded feed and 175 kg of counterfeit N&F-branded feed. They also found another 6,975 kg of unbranded feed, 17,510 imitation branded plastic bags and boxes, five printing and press machines and four electronic scales. One thousand litres of counterfeit Ever Clean-branded cat litter was also seized. The estimated market value of everything found was approximately 4.275 million TL.
This was not somebody accused of selling a few questionable bags through an online marketplace. Authorities had found tonnes of feed, thousands of imitation packages and machinery capable of producing branded packaging. One suspect faced proceedings under Turkey’s Industrial Property Law, but from an animal welfare perspective that is only part of the story. A counterfeit trademark tells us that somebody has imitated a brand. It does not tell us what was inside the bag, and for the dog or cat eating it that is arguably the most important question of all.
The 6,975 kg of unbranded feed found at the warehouse is particularly striking when considered alongside 17,510 imitation packages and the printing equipment. We need to be precise here. The official statement does not say that this feed was intended to be placed inside those packages and we cannot make that connection without evidence. What we can reasonably ask is what that feed was, whether it was analysed and what investigators subsequently established about it. We have been unable to establish from publicly available information whether laboratory analysis determined its nutritional composition, whether contaminants or other hazards were present or even whether it was nutritionally suitable as complete food for dogs or cats.
We have also been unable to establish whether investigators discovered where the counterfeit products were intended to be sold, whether any had already entered the retail supply chain or whether consumers who might have bought them were identified. We have not found a publicly reported final outcome of the case either. A large seizure was announced, the quantities and brands were published and legal proceedings were initiated, but some of the information that matters most to somebody responsible for feeding an animal is much harder to find.
Complete dog and cat foods are formulated to provide particular levels and proportions of nutrients. Puppies and kittens have nutritional requirements associated with growth and some animals depend upon diets selected because of specific health conditions. At the most vulnerable end are newborn animals dependent upon milk replacer. If the contents of a package do not correspond with the formulation printed on the outside, the potential consequences go beyond intellectual-property infringement and consumer fraud. The animal eats whatever is inside.
We are not saying that every counterfeit pet food is necessarily dangerous and we do not know what was contained in the food seized in Menderes. That lack of information is precisely why the case interests us. If counterfeit animal food is discovered, testing the contents and establishing whether it presents a risk to animals should matter just as much as establishing whose trademark has been copied.
Nor does a consumer believing that a product is fake establish that it is. Turkish pet owners regularly discuss food they suspect may be counterfeit, but a change in colour, smell, kibble size or texture can have other explanations. Manufacturers change formulations and production facilities, packaging changes and genuine food can deteriorate through poor storage. An animal becoming ill after a new bag is opened does not prove that the food was counterfeit. Consumer reports may identify something worth investigating, but suspicion is not evidence.
What makes the situation interesting is the sequence of documented events. In 2024, increasing complaints about counterfeit pet food contributed to an industry workshop attended by government representatives. In 2025, authorities discovered an operation containing tonnes of counterfeit branded feed, almost seven tonnes of unbranded feed, thousands of imitation packages and printing equipment. By 2026, consumers buying Royal Canin in Turkey had access to a product-authentication mechanism. What remains remarkably difficult to establish is the overall scale of the trade, what counterfeit foods have actually been found to contain and how much reaches animals before somebody discovers it.
That takes us back to where this investigation began, because economics and availability matter. Our problem was not that somebody offered us a product we knew to be counterfeit. Nobody did. Our problem was that a product we needed was unavailable through the suppliers we normally trusted, forcing us to decide how far outside that familiar supply chain we were prepared to go to obtain it.
Scarcity and high prices do not cause counterfeiting and they certainly do not prove that a particular seller or product is fraudulent. They can, however, create favourable conditions for counterfeit goods. If an authorised retailer has no stock while an unfamiliar seller claims to have it, the unfamiliar seller suddenly has something extremely valuable: availability. If the legitimate product is expensive, a substantially cheaper version becomes more attractive too.
Animal rescuers can be particularly exposed to those pressures. Rescue organisations use large quantities of food, often work within extremely tight budgets and cannot simply stop feeding animals while they wait for the normal supply chain to recover. A person feeding an orphaned kitten does not have the luxury of saying that they will try again next month.
That is why the answer cannot simply be to tell consumers to shop more carefully. People need to know who authorised importers and suppliers are, how products can be authenticated, where suspicious products should be reported and what happens after a report is made. When authorities discover tonnes of counterfeit animal food, people also need to know whether the contents were tested and whether any of it had already reached the animals it was supposedly intended to feed.
Dog Desk Animal Action has contacted Royal Canin Turkey because we want an explanation for the immediate problem that started this investigation. We have asked why Babycat Milk is currently difficult to obtain, whether its import or distribution has been interrupted, when normal availability is expected to resume and why the Turkish price differs so substantially from the price in Britain. We have also asked whether counterfeit or unauthorised Royal Canin products are a significant problem in Turkey and what the company recommends consumers and rescue organisations do to ensure the products they purchase are genuine.
But our questions now go much further than one tin of kitten milk or one manufacturer. We want to know how many suspected counterfeit dog and cat food cases Turkish authorities have investigated, how much product has been seized, whether seized feed is routinely subjected to laboratory analysis and what those tests have found. We want to know whether authorities have established how counterfeit products reach consumers, whether animals are known to have been harmed and whether the problem is being considered from an animal-health perspective as well as through intellectual-property and consumer-protection law.
There may be reassuring answers. Counterfeit products may represent only a tiny proportion of Turkey’s enormous pet-food market. Enforcement operations may be preventing most of them from reaching consumers and seized foods may routinely undergo testing that simply is not reported publicly. If that evidence exists, we want to see it, because the evidence available at the moment leaves an important part of the picture missing.
We know complaints became serious enough to bring industry and government representatives together. We know authorities subsequently found tonnes of counterfeit branded dog and cat food. We know thousands of imitation packages existed and we know a major international manufacturer provides Turkish consumers with a way of authenticating its products.
What we do not know is how much counterfeit pet food is reaching dogs and cats or what those animals are actually eating when it does.
We will continue to follow