Fresh and Raw Took 14 Points of China's Cat Food Shelf

Executive Summary#

Get the Full Report: Download the complete analysis for detailed data, methodology, and pages of insights.

Three claims moved the same way in both of the markets measured between 2022 and 2025: senior claims rose on both supplements shelves, fresh and raw claims concentrated in food in both, and grain-free reallocated out of the food shelf in both. The largest single move anywhere in the study belongs to fresh and raw on the Chinese food shelf: +14.19 percentage points, from 9.00% to 23.18% of shelf revenue, with listings from 2,468 to 8,645. Those three agreements are the control on the four claims that diverge.

The Agreements Are the Control#

A shelf, throughout this article, means one marketplace category — the group of products a shopper browses within. Two of them matter here: cat staple food, and pet supplements.

Our companion analyses reported four claims running in opposite directions in China and the United States: probiotic, digestive, joint and cardiac. Two separately built datasets, in two languages and two category trees, could diverge for methodological reasons as easily as commercial ones.

The agreements answer that. Senior claims rose on both supplements shelves, +1.73 points in China and +2.13 in the United States. Fresh and raw claims concentrated in food in both. Grain-free receded from the food shelf in both, giving up 13.70 points in China and 4.10 in the United States.

A method producing noise would not align on three claims across two separately built datasets and then diverge on four.

The control that makes the divergences credible

Fresh and Raw Took 14.19 Points of the Chinese Food Shelf#

On the Chinese food shelf the claim went from 9.00% to 23.18% of shelf revenue. Its listings went from 2,468 to 8,645 and its sellers from 688 to 1,219. Share and listings climbed in every one of the four years; the seller count peaked in 2024. Almost a quarter of that shelf's revenue now sits behind a fresh or raw claim.

Fresh and raw claims took almost a quarter of the shelf

Grain-Free Is Giving Way on Both Food Shelves#

Grain-free moved 13.70 points the other way over the same window in China, a near-identical distance to the fresh and raw gain.

That is not a one-for-one transfer between two labels, and this analysis is built so that the arithmetic cannot be done: the two are overlapping selections and are never summed, because a single product can carry both claims at once. The whole shelf has moved.

The American shelf runs the same direction at a slower speed: grain-free went from 25.41% to 21.31% of that shelf's revenue. A claim that arrives as a differentiator and is then adopted by everyone stops differentiating, and the shelf reallocates attention to whatever is newer. It is happening in both markets, at different speeds — which is what you would expect if the two shelves are running the same course and are at different points along it. That is an interpretation, and flagged as one.

What This Changes#

For anyone building a Chinese cat-food range, fresh and raw is the claim to lead with, and grain-free is the claim to stop paying a premium for. Almost a quarter of the shelf already carries the fresh claim, and the premium a grain-free label commanded in 2022 is being competed away.

For a United States range, the same decision arrives on a different schedule. Grain-free still holds above a fifth of that shelf, and has further to travel before it stops setting a product apart. A brand that read the Chinese number and cut its grain-free line in the United States would be acting two or three years early.

Senior claims, meanwhile, are the one place a single global product decision is defensible on this evidence: they rise on the supplements shelf in both markets, at similar magnitude.

Key Takeaways#

• Three claims moved the same way in both markets: senior on supplements, fresh / raw into food, grain-free out of food. Those three are what make the four divergent claims credible.
• Fresh and raw at +14.19 points is the largest single move anywhere in the study: 9.00% to 23.18% of the Chinese food shelf, climbing in all four years.
• Supply confirms it. Fresh / raw listings went from 2,468 to 8,645 across 688 to 1,219 sellers.
• Grain-free moved 13.70 points the other way in China and 4.10 in the United States. The claims overlap and are never summed, so this is a shelf re-centring rather than a label swap.
• Senior claims are the one claim here supporting a single cross-market product decision.

About the Data#

This article summarises findings from the Moojing report Pet Brands Are Selling Gut Health as Food in China and as a Supplement in the US. Data covers complete calendar years 2022 to 2025 on one leading Chinese marketplace and one leading United States marketplace. Claims are measured by product-title keyword selection and expressed as a share of that shelf's own revenue in the same year; no absolute revenue is compared across markets, because currencies, price bases and data versions differ. Claim groups are independent, overlapping selections and are never summed. Only the four inverting claims are a single word in both languages; grain-free, fresh/raw and senior are not, and are reported as directionally sound but not precisely comparable. This analysis measures what products claim and where those claims sell. It makes no assessment of whether any ingredient or formulation works.