| 🥩 Food Type | Dry Food |
| 📅 Life Stage | All Life Stages |
| 💪 Health Needs | Digestive Health|Skin & Coat |
| 🏷️ Brand | Earthborn Holistic |
| ⭐ Our Rating | 4.1 / 5 |
Grain-free cat food usually leans on one protein source and calls it a day. Earthborn Holistic Primitive Feline Chicken & Vegetables stacks four: chicken, chicken meal, salmon meal, and two more fish meals further down the panel, then backs the whole thing with probiotics and a produce-aisle list of pumpkin, apples, and cranberries. It's a formula built by a small Midwestern miller, not a corporate pet food division, and that origin shows up in both the ingredient choices and, less flatteringly, in the company's safety track record.
Earthborn Holistic is made by Midwestern Pet Foods, a company that started in 1926 as a small grain mill in Evansville, Indiana, and moved into pet food in the 1940s. Unlike most of the brands covered on this site, Earthborn has never been sold to a larger conglomerate. It's still run by the same family, now in its fourth generation, and manufactured across the company's own U.S. plants in Evansville, Monmouth (Illinois), Chickasha (Oklahoma), and Waverly (New York). That independence cuts both ways: there's no distant corporate parent setting formulation standards, but there's also less redundancy when something goes wrong at one facility, which is relevant given the recall history below.
The first two ingredients are chicken and chicken meal, giving this recipe a real, named protein base before anything else appears. Pumpkin, sweet potato, and tapioca supply the grain-free carbohydrate load, while peas and pea protein add plant protein further down the list. Three additional fish ingredients, salmon meal, Alaska pollock meal, and Pacific whiting meal, round out the protein panel and are the main source of the omega-3s highlighted on the bag.
The produce list reads more like a smoothie recipe than a typical kibble panel: apples, blueberries, carrots, cranberries, and spinach all show up in small amounts, contributing antioxidants rather than meaningful calories. Dried chicory root adds inulin as a prebiotic, and the formula includes three separate probiotic strains. Worth flagging for grain-free skeptics: pea protein this far down the ingredient list is a modest inclusion, not the primary carb source, which is a less aggressive use of legume protein than some competitors in this category.
Confirmed from Chewy's listing for this SKU:
Converting to dry matter basis (DMB), with dry matter at 90% (100% minus 10% moisture):
A 40% DMB protein figure is genuinely high for a dry cat food, closer to what a cat would get from a wet diet, and it puts this formula ahead of most grain-inclusive competitors on paper. Cats are obligate carnivores with a much higher protein requirement than dogs, so this number matters more here than it would in a dog food review.
The three-strain probiotic blend (Enterococcus faecium, Lactobacillus casei, and Lactobacillus acidophilus) paired with chicory root inulin is a more deliberate gut-health approach than most dry cat foods bother with. DHA at 0.15% and the broader omega-3 content from the fish meals support coat and cognitive health, and the guaranteed 0.10% taurine covers the one amino acid every cat food absolutely needs enough of. Chelated minerals (zinc proteinate, manganese proteinate, copper proteinate) are included alongside standard mineral sulfates, which generally means better absorption than sulfates alone.
Chewy carries this recipe in two sizes: a 4-lb bag at $15.99 ($4.00/lb) and a 12.5-lb bag at $31.99 ($2.56/lb), the better value of the two. At 3,500 kcal/kg, the 12.5-lb bag (5.67 kg) delivers approximately 19,845 total kcal, working out to roughly $1.61 per 1,000 kcal. That's inexpensive for a grain-free formula built around three named fish proteins plus chicken.
Chewy's listing doesn't include a weight-based feeding chart for this product, so for a 10-lb adult cat, using a standard maintenance estimate (RER × 1.2 for a typical neutered indoor cat), daily needs come out to roughly 260 kcal, or about 3/4 cup. That's close to 7,800 kcal per month, putting monthly cost at around $12.60 from the 12.5-lb bag.
This exact product has a recall on record. In March 2021, Midwestern Pet Foods issued a voluntary recall across several of its brands, including specific lots of Earthborn Holistic Primitive Feline in 5-lb and 14-lb bags, after routine testing found possible Salmonella contamination traced to the company's Monmouth, Illinois plant. No illnesses were reported, and there have been no further recalls involving Earthborn cat food since.
That recall is worth seeing in context. Two months earlier, in January 2021, Midwestern recalled over a thousand lots of its Sportmix brand, made at a separate Chickasha, Oklahoma facility, after aflatoxin contamination was linked to more than 130 pet deaths and over 220 illnesses, one of the more serious pet food safety failures in recent years. The FDA followed up with a company-wide warning letter in August 2021. Sportmix and Earthborn are different product lines made at different plants, so the aflatoxin crisis doesn't reflect a defect in this specific recipe, but it does mean Midwestern's broader manufacturing oversight came under real regulatory scrutiny in the same year this product's own recall happened.
Away from the recall record, Earthborn runs two long-standing environmental programs worth knowing about. Earthborn ReBorn, run with TerraCycle, lets owners drop off empty pet food bags at participating retailers for free recycling rather than the landfill; the brand reports having processed over 2 million bags through the program, some of which get upcycled into products like outdoor furniture. Separately, UPCs for Trees, running since 2009 with Trees for the Future, plants one tree for every product barcode mailed in or dropped off, and Earthborn reports more than 1.3 million trees planted in deforested regions worldwide through the program. Both figures come from the brand's own reporting rather than an independent audit, but the programs are real and have been running for well over a decade, predating Earthborn's current ownership structure.
This recipe suits owners who want a genuinely high-protein, grain-free cat food without paying boutique prices, and who like the idea of a smaller, independent manufacturer over a corporate pet food division. It's a reasonable pick for cats that do well on legume-inclusive grain-free diets and don't need a limited-ingredient or novel-protein formula. It's a poor fit for owners who specifically want zero recall history or who prefer buying from a company with no ties to a larger safety incident, even an indirect one.
This recipe holds a 4.6-star average across 344 ratings on Chewy, with 83% five-star reviews and only 3% at one star. Chewy's AI-assisted review summary shows 89% positive on ingredients, 87% positive on nutritional value, 86% positive on digestibility, and 81% positive on palatability, the softest of the four categories. Recurring themes in the reviews include picky cats eating it readily and owners specifically mentioning it as a good value relative to other grain-free options.
Earthborn's own instructions keep things simple: feed once or twice a day using the chart on the bag as a guide, with wet-mixing instructions (3 parts kibble to 1 part water, milk, or broth) for cats who prefer moistened food. Gestating or lactating cats may need up to three times the normal adult amount. When switching foods, the brand recommends a 7 to 14 day transition, longer than the 5-to-7-day window some competitors suggest, moving in 25% increments every few days.
On the numbers, this is one of the stronger formulas reviewed on this site for a cat: 40% DMB protein, three named fish proteins backing the chicken, a real probiotic blend, and a price that undercuts most grain-free competitors. Owners clearly agree, with a 4.6-star average that's among the highest seen here. The score below that isn't a knock on the recipe itself so much as on what sits behind it: a 2021 recall that directly named this product, arriving the same year its manufacturer faced a much larger, unrelated crisis and a corporate-wide FDA warning letter over conditions at a different plant. Owners comfortable with that history are getting genuinely good nutrition for the price.
This review is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional veterinary advice. Always consult your veterinarian before changing your pet's diet, especially if your cat has existing health conditions.
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Yes, it's a high-protein, grain-free formula with 40% DMB protein and three named fish proteins, backed by a 4.6-star owner rating on Chewy.
Yes, specific lots of the 5-lb and 14-lb bags were recalled in March 2021 over possible Salmonella contamination. No illnesses were reported, and there have been no recalls since.
36% crude protein as-fed, which converts to roughly 40% on a dry matter basis, high for a dry cat food.
Yes, it uses pumpkin, sweet potato, tapioca, and peas instead of grains.
Roughly $12.60 per month for a 10-lb adult cat, based on an estimated daily intake and the 12.5-lb bag price.
