Big Pet Food's Fresh Food Pivot — And What's Really Happening in the Hill's DCM Lawsuit

Two things happened in the pet food world recently that look unrelated. They're not.

First: Hill's, Royal Canin, and Blue Buffalo are all rolling out fresh, refrigerated dog food this year. Second: a federal appeals court just revived part of a $2.6 billion lawsuit accusing Hill's of manufacturing the grain-free DCM scare that's been repeated by veterinarians for almost a decade. Put those two stories next to each other and a pattern shows up fast — and it isn't about your pet's health.

Listen to the full episode of The Pet Parenting Reset podcast

The fresh food rollout — good news wearing an asterisk

If you've spent any time in the pet space, you already know fresh feeding isn't a trend anymore. It's where the market is going, and the big companies know it. Hill's Science Diet launched a single-protein refrigerated line this past July. Royal Canin has its "Fresh Health Nutrition" line, gently cooked and free of corn, wheat, or soy. Blue Buffalo has "Love Made Fresh," their frozen offering.

Here's the bottom line: I'm genuinely glad hydration is finally on the table for pet parents who'd otherwise never leave the kibble aisle. That's real progress, and it matters. But these products are still formulated the same way kibble is formulated — same underlying approach to ingredients and quality, just with water added back in. It's a stepping stone, not a destination.

And these companies aren't rolling out fresh lines because they suddenly care more about your dog. They're doing it because their market share has been sliding for years as fresh and raw feeding grew. This shift shows you what pet parents actually want — the big companies are just catching up to it, reluctantly, on their own terms.

The lawsuit — where it actually stands right now

Here's where it connects. Back in February 2024, KetoNatural Pet Foods filed a class action lawsuit against Hill's Pet Nutrition — a 124-page complaint alleging that Hill's ran a coordinated, for-profit misinformation campaign to link grain-free, boutique, and exotic-ingredient ("BEG") pet foods to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a serious heart condition in dogs.

The timeline matters here. From 2011 to 2017, grain-free pet food sales climbed while Hill's revenue declined over that same stretch. Then, starting in 2018, Hill's began publishing material linking non-traditional and grain-free diets to canine DCM — right as reports of DCM to the FDA spiked. KetoNatural's complaint alleges that timing wasn't a coincidence.

The district court dismissed the case in late 2024, finding Hill's statements didn't meet the legal bar for "commercial speech." KetoNatural appealed. In July 2026, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lower court got it partly wrong — finding that some of Hill's own statements, including material on Hill's website and in Hill's veterinary education content, could plausibly count as commercial speech and could be false. That part of the case is moving forward. Next step: discovery, where both sides have to start turning over evidence.

Worth being straight with you here — the piece of the original complaint focused specifically on the affiliated veterinarians and nonprofit organizations didn't survive the appeal the same way. That angle was dropped from what's currently proceeding. What's moving forward is narrower: Hill's own marketing and educational statements, not the broader web of individuals and organizations named at the outset.

Why this matters regardless of how the case ends

I'm not a lawyer, and everything here is still allegation until a jury or judge says otherwise. But you don't need a verdict to look at what's actually in the bag. Whatever gets sorted out in a Kansas courtroom over the next year or two, the formulation and ingredient list in front of you right now tell you what you need to know today.

This is where ReWilding comes back in. Even the best commercially available pet food — and there are genuinely good ones out there — is still working inside a broken system. So whatever base food you're feeding, keep adding real, wild elements on top: an egg yolk, sardines, tripe, a mushroom your dog's food will never legally contain because it isn't a defined AAFCO ingredient. Small additions, real difference.

Find Court Documents thus far

• Original lawsuit complaint (filed 2/6/24, District of Kansas)
• Tenth Circuit appellate ruling (July 2026)
• Original TPPR episode on this lawsuit

The Truth About DCM and Grain-Free Food

The Journal of Animal Science published a paper in July 2025 titled "Different carbohydrate sources in dog foods supported overall health and cardiac function: an 18-mo prospective study in healthy adult dogs" which concluded that there is no causal link between DCM in dogs regardless of grain inclusion in the diets.