Dog Food Allergies: What Dogs React To, and What a Novel Protein Can Do

In a 2016 review of published food-challenge cases in 297 dogs, of the dogs with confirmed adverse food reactions, the most frequently identified allergens were beef (34% of dogs), dairy (17%), chicken (15%) and wheat (13%), followed by soy (6%), lamb (5%), corn (4%) and egg (4%) (Mueller, Olivry & Prélaud, BMC Veterinary Research, 2016).

Those four sit in a great many dog foods, including some sold for sensitive dogs. This does not imply that these proteins are more allergenic, but rather, because they are so common, there is much higher exposure to them, which may lead to the development of adverse reactions.

The authors are careful about what those numbers are: frequencies among published cases where a reaction was confirmed by rechallenge, not true prevalence across the dog population. They say so explicitly. It is still the best picture the literature offers of what dogs actually react to.

In dogs with adverse food reactions, skin signs are common and can include itchy skin, recurrent ear and skin infections. They can also present with digestive signs like vomiting, diarrhoea, loose stools and more frequent defecation.

A novel protein is simply one your dog has not eaten before.

A dog is unlikely to be sensitised to a protein it has never met. That is why novel proteins are a standard tool in veterinary elimination diets, and why black soldier fly larvae qualify for many dogs in the UK — many have never eaten insects before.

This is about exposure, not about insects being intrinsically harmless. What novel proteins do is make a pre-existing sensitivity very unlikely. Being novel does not make a protein incapable of causing sensitivities.

Yes, in principle. Any protein can provoke a reaction, and how often this happens with insect protein is not known.

No trial has fed a black soldier fly diet to a large group of dogs with confirmed food allergy and measured clinical reactions under controlled conditions. Insect proteins are also still being studied for cross-reactivity with crustacean and house dust mite allergens, which is a live question in veterinary science rather than a settled one.

There’s no single agreed definition of “hypoallergenic” for dog food, so here’s what we mean when we use it on our packaging and product pages: the recipe is built to leave out the ingredients dogs most commonly react to. Our complete foods use one novel animal protein, black soldier fly larvae, and contain no chicken, beef, lamb, fish, dairy, wheat or soya.

It describes what’s in the recipe, not a guaranteed outcome. No controlled trial has yet tested insect protein in dogs with confirmed food allergy, and any protein can cause a reaction. If your dog has a diagnosed food allergy, your vet should guide any change of diet.

The honest answer is that the evidence is early and encouraging rather than conclusive.

In a small preliminary trial published in 2025, eight dogs with diagnosed adverse food reactions — already stabilised on an elimination diet — were fed a black soldier fly diet for four weeks. Their itch scores stayed stable, having fallen from a mean of 6.0 before the elimination diet to 2.0 at the start of the trial, and no significant gastrointestinal side effects were seen. The scores range from 0 to 10, with 0 meaning that itching is not a problem for the dog, while 10 referring to extreme itching. One of the eight was withdrawn at week two after its itching worsened (Srifawattana et al., Veterinary Sciences, 2025).

The trial was small, short, unblinded and uncontrolled, and the authors say larger and longer studies are needed. What it shows is that a black soldier fly diet held these dogs steady — not that it caused the improvement, which the elimination diet had already produced before the trial began.

A separate 2020 trial in twelve beagles found larvae meal at 200g/kg was well tolerated over five weeks, with no effect on blood counts or any immune measure (Kröger, Heide & Zentek, Animal Feed Science and Technology, 2020).