EP #501 - Maria de Bettencourt Tavares: Why Supermarket Pet Food is Poisoning Your Pets
June 16, 2025
Co-produced by
Co-produced by
9:33 - Leaving a corporate and starting your own company
18:00 - Why pet food is terrible
29:08 - Why there’s a market for Loonawell
33:32 - Pet food made by an executive chef?
36:14 - Why established pet food companies can’t compete with Loonawell
About Maria de Bettencourt Tavares:
Maria de Bettencourt Tavares is the founder and CEO of Loonawell, a startup creating human-grade healthy food for dogs. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Lisbon Medical School and an MBA from Escuela de Negocios de la Cámara de Comercio de Sevilla. She worked for FISEVI, DSM Nutritional Products and Givaudan before starting Loonawell in 2020.
Maria was driven to start a pet food brand by the harrowing statistics that she discovered: according to peer-reviewed research, 25% of dogs will die of cancer, and 50% of dogs past the age of 10 will die of cancer as well. This is mostly due to the extremely poor nutrition they receive. Most pet food that can be found in supermarkets consists of one main ingredient: “meat meal” or “fish meal”. Meat meal is the legal term used to name all the derivatives of meat processing, i.e., whatever is left after the human-grade cuts have been extracted. This can be bones, hooves, or hair.
80% of pet owners buy pet food based on how it smells (for them, not the pet), which is why pet food companies add all sorts of artificial aromas. The pets, unfortunately, are unable to complain, and so eat themselves to an early death. Loonawell, on the contrary, uses only organic, natural ingredients, with no added preservatives, to develop chef- and vet-approved recipes that will give pets a long and healthy life. Although their products are fit for human consumption, they are legally prevented from advertising them as such. Loonawell is the first and only pet food in the world to be certified with the Swiss Vitamin Institute Label.
Resources Mentioned:
Silence: the Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, by Thich Nhat Hahn
Irvin D. Yallom’s books
The cover portrait was edited by www.smartportrait.io.
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