CBD to Life Stage Support: Pet Supplement Trends to Watch

By tapping directly into the human-animal bond, the pet supplement category is booming.

After all, pet parents who believe they benefit from taking supplements also want their pet to experience the same positive impacts to their health.

Pet supplements can be divided into two main categories, nutritional and health supplements.

Nutritional supplements are those that have been formulated to provide nutritional benefits and are given in conjunction with a normal diet. The list includes vitamins and minerals, skin and coat products, fiber-based products and those that support digestive health focusing on enzymes and probiotics.

Health supplements are defined as products with active ingredients that may help maintain normal physiological structure and function of the body such as hip and joint support products, calming aids, antioxidants, organ-specific products such as those that target heart and brain health and immune support.

“Pet Supplements in the U.S.” (8^th edition), the Packaged Fact’s report that was published in 2020, endorsed the pet parent/pet correlation, and highlighted how dog owners purchased the majority of supplements, spending four times as much as cat parents. Further, the report detailed that product introduced by veterinarians to their clients accounted for 46 per cent of supplement sales.

To benefit and educate pet parents about supplement options, the National Animal Supplement Council (NASC) has produced a detailed booklet, “The Pocket Guide to Dog and Cat Health.” It details how supplements can successfully be incorporated into a pet’s wellness regimen and highlights the benefits of individual ingredients. Further, it explains how the marketplace is regulated by the NASC.

“We offer it to our members as a promotional item to give away at shows or include with orders,” explained Jeni Rector, marketing manager for NASC. “We also send it out on request to veterinarians who wish to give to their clients.”

Supplements for All Life Stages

A post-pandemic plus for the supplement market has been the increase in pet parents worrying about their pets in their specific life stage.

Spending more time with their pets has had a positive effect of alerting pet parents to everything from skin and coat issues, digestion problems and hairballs, joint health, and anxiety across all age groups and effectively expanded the life stages marketplace. Further, products being marketed as “veterinary formulations,” are lending credible scientific weight to product claims making them even more acceptable to consumers.

Future Watch

Apart from the benefits expounded about cannabinoids for both human and pet consumption, and their more widespread acceptance, there has also been an added interest in natural products in marketplace boosted by Millennial interest in general good health. CBD products, as well, because they’re derived from hemp, also fall into this expanding natural category.

The current pet supplement marketplace has CBD in a variety of formats, from sprinkles and drops to chewy formulations and creams; something for every dog, cat and critter, with new products being added to the already full shelf at an amazing rate.

Packaged Facts summed up this growing trend in its report by aying, “looking back, it’s hard to recall anything making more of a splash in human and pet supplements than CBD, whose explosion onto the market has birthed a burgeoning new product segment and brought new attention to the supplements business as a whole via a “halo effect” that seems likely to last for years.”