Sheba cat food in India

At a glance

The table below is what can be established about this brand from primary records, and what cannot. Every row reading "Not established" is written up in full at the foot of the page, with what was looked for and where.

Where it is made

Origin is recorded per product, not per brand, because it varies per product. The evidence column says how strong each row is: a pack in hand outranks a filing, and a marketplace listing is the weakest thing here that is still evidence.

What it costs in India

Each row is one seller's listed price for one pack size on one date, converted to a price per kilogram so the pack sizes compare. Indian marketplace pricing moves, so a single listing is not a price and none of these is quoted on its own. One row shows a seller that stocks this product with nothing payable on the day it was read. Such a row is here because it evidences distribution, and it carries no price because a figure you cannot pay is not one.

• Amazon.in, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 1.5 kg. Joint cheapest of five, to the rupee. Sold by ETrade Online, shipped by Amazon. The listing's own unit price reads Rs 62.33 per g beside Rs 62.33 per 100 g, and only the second is right.
• Supertails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 1.5 kg. From the shop's own variant data. MRP Rs 1,099.
• Zigly, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 1.5 kg. Third seller at exactly Rs 935. The identical catalogue is served at petsy.online, which redirects here, so Petsy is not a sixth seller.
• Petsworld, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 1.5 kg. MRP Rs 1,099. 5.8 percent above the three sellers at Rs 935.
• Heads Up For Tails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 1.5 kg. Dearest of the five, 8.1 percent above the cheapest. On the Whiskas dry pack this shop was the cheapest, so a retailer's position is per product and not a habit.
• Amazon.in, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Salmon Flavour, 1.5 kg. The pack whose ingredient list contains no salmon. MRP Rs 1,099, 12 percent off. Country of origin Thailand, manufacturer Mars Petcare (Thailand) at Pakchong. 4.4 from 407 ratings.
• Supertails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Salmon Flavour, 1.5 kg. Identical to Amazon. Rs 32 above this shop's own chicken version of the same pack size, which is what the salmon flavouring costs.
• Zigly, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Salmon Flavour, 1.5 kg. Two rupees above Amazon and Supertails.
• Heads Up For Tails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Salmon Flavour, 1.5 kg. This shop charges the same Rs 1,011 for the chicken and the salmon, so it prices the flavouring at nothing.
• Supertails, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 12-pouch pack. Joint cheapest. Flavour varies by seller across the 35 g pouch range, which is a like-for-like caveat on this SKU. MRP Rs 600.
• Petsworld, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 12-pouch pack. Matches Supertails to the rupee across three different flavours of the same pack.
• Heads Up For Tails, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 12-pouch pack. 5.6 percent above the cheapest. The dearest price per kilogram on this brand.
• Zigly, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 12-pouch pack. Matches Heads Up For Tails. This shop also lists a 12-pouch pack of one flavour at Rs 459, marked unavailable.
• Amazon.in, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 36-pouch pack. Cheapest per kilogram of any Sheba wet pack found, and 12.7 percent below Supertails on the same count. This is the listing declaring China with no manufacturer named. 4.5 from 36 ratings, sold by ETrade Online.
• Zigly, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 36-pouch pack. MRP Rs 1,800.
• Supertails, Sheba Rich Premium Wet Cat Food, 35 g pouch, 36-pouch pack. Dearest on this count, and this shop's 13-pouch pack at Rs 553 is cheaper per kilogram than its own 12-pouch pack at Rs 540.
• Petsworld, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 400 g. Cheapest 400 g found. MRP Rs 300.
• Supertails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 400 g. 9.5 percent dearer per kilogram than this shop's own 1.5 kg bag, which is the ordinary small-pack premium.
• Heads Up For Tails, Sheba Kitten & Adult Irresistible Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavour, 400 g. MRP Rs 300.

Recall checks

Each register below was searched for this brand, and then searched again for something comparable to prove it answers at all. A register that returns nothing for both has cleared nothing. India maintains no pet food recall register, so no row here can stand in for one.

Four countries, and one page that contradicts itself

Sheba listings in India declare Hungary, Thailand, China and Mars India as the country of origin across the range, and the sharpest case gives Hungary twice on a page that names a Thai factory as the manufacturer.

Start with the page that contradicts itself, because it needs no interpretation. Supertails' listing for Sheba Skipjack & Salmon Fish Mix Cat Wet Food reads, in one continuous block, "Country of Origin: Hungary Name & Address of Manufacturer: Pattaya Food Industries Ltd, 90/6, Moo 7, Tha Sai, Mueang Samut Sakhon, Samut Sakhon 74000, Thailand Imported by: MARS International India Pvt. Ltd.";. The same page carries a separate product attribute reading "Manufacturing Location" with the value "Hungary". So the origin says Hungary twice, and the only factory named anywhere on the page is in Thailand.

The dry food is the one clear case, and it points at a Mars plant. Amazon's listing for the Salmon Flavour dry 1.5 kg declares country of origin Thailand and gives manufacturer contact information as "MARS PETCARE (THAILAND) CO., LTD., 799 M0O 4, CHANTUK, PAKCHONG, NAKHORNRATCHASIMA - 30130, THAILAND. TEL.: (66) 44 310 500";. That is the same Pakchong plant named on Whiskas dry cat food, so Mars makes both its budget and its premium dry cat food for India at one Thai site. The page even leaves an internal code in the field, reading "Manufacturer | J36WT, Mars Petcare, MARS PETCARE (THAILAND) CO., LTD."

The China declaration is real, and the block it sits in is not reliable. Amazon listing B087DH5SCF gives "country-of-origin | China" and names no manufacturer and no importer. That field was read directly from the product information table, so it is not a misremembering. The same table on the same listing also calls this cooked wet pouch food "Animal Food Diet Type | Raw", gives "Breed Recommendation | Large Breeds, Medium Breeds" for a cat food, sets "Container Type | Bag" for a box of pouches, and lists "Occasion | Birthday".

The brand says nothing at all. No product page on sheba.in carries a country of origin. What the brand does publish is a standing two-address block on its contact page: under "You can write to us at" the Siddipet plant in Telangana, and under "Imported & Distributed by" MARS International India Pvt. Ltd. at Ansari Road, Darya Ganji, New Delhi. That tells a reader the range is at least partly imported and stops there. Pedigree India's contact page carries only the first block, so Sheba discloses more than its stablemate and less than a buyer needs.

The recall history for this brand is set out further down, with its controls and its jurisdictional limits, because a nil from an American register says little about a Thai or Chinese supply chain.

One caveat that stops the Delhi address proving too much. The same Ansari Road address appears in the importer field of a Pedigree listing whose own origin field says India and whose manufacturer is the Siddipet plant. A product made in India has no importer, so that address is used on Amazon as a general Mars India contact and proves nothing about import on its own. The import signal that does carry weight here is the brand's own standing "Imported & Distributed by" block together with the named Thai manufacturing addresses on two separate SKUs.

Part of the range is made by a third-party Thai company

Pattaya Food Industries Ltd, a Thai food manufacturer that is not a Mars company, is named as the manufacturer of a Sheba wet food sold in India, which makes this the only brand in this research where a premium product's maker is a traceable outside contractor.

The name and the address, verbatim. Supertails gives "Name & Address of Manufacturer: Pattaya Food Industries Ltd, 90/6, Moo 7, Tha Sai, Mueang Samut Sakhon, Samut Sakhon 74000, Thailand", with SKU CFOWF0093SH. That is a company with its own name at its own address, not a Mars entity.

Two independent sources agree to the door number. An earlier reading of Amazon's Sheba Deluxe 85 g listing recorded the same street address, 90/6 Moo 7 Tha Sai, Mueang Samut Sakhon, Samut Sakhon 74000, with no company name attached. One source gave the address without the company and the other gave both, and they match exactly. That is better evidence than either alone.

Why a third-party co-packer is worth a buyer's attention and is not a criticism. Contract manufacturing is normal and widespread, and a specialist Thai seafood processor may well run better handling for tuna and bonito than a general pet food line would. The point is narrower. Sheba is sold as the premium tier, it costs 2.6 times its own stablemate per kilogram, and part of its range is made by an outside co-packer the brand never mentions. A reader paying a premium is entitled to know who cooks the food, and on this brand that answer comes from a retailer's statutory block rather than from Mars.

What is not established. Which Sheba SKUs Pattaya Food Industries makes, whether Mars has any published relationship with it, and whether the Hungary declaration on that same page refers to a real Hungarian plant or is an error. All three are listed in what is not established, with the test that would settle each.

There is no salmon in Sheba's Salmon Flavour dry cat food

Sheba's Salmon Flavour dry cat food lists chicken as its first ingredient and no salmon anywhere, with the salmon appearing as a flavouring after the preservatives, and the pack name is legally careful about it.

The brand's own ingredient list, in full and verbatim. Sheba's page for the Salmon Flavour dry cat food 1.5 kg gives the ingredients as "Chicken and chicken by product meal, Corn, Wheat, Chicken Oil, Coconut Oil, Animal hydrolysate, Rice, Beet Pulp, Poultry Liver Powder, Minerals, Wheat Flour, Flavour, Fish Oil, Vitamins, Amino Acids, Fructooligosaccharide, Preservatives, Salmon Flavour, Food Colouring, Colostrum";.

Read the order, because order is what an ingredient list means. Chicken and chicken by-product meal is first, so it is the largest component. Corn and wheat are second and third. The only fish in the list is "Fish Oil", with no species given, in thirteenth place. "Salmon Flavour" is eighteenth, after "Preservatives". The nineteenth item is "Food Colouring".

The salmon version costs more than the chicken version, and both are mostly chicken. At Supertails the Chicken Flavour 1.5 kg is Rs 935 and the Salmon Flavour is Rs 967, so the salmon flavouring adds Rs 32, or 3.4 percent, to a food whose first three ingredients are the same in both.

And the same product has two different published ingredient lists. Amazon's listing for the same 1.5 kg bag gives "Chicken and Chicken by-products, poultry liver, cereal, minerals, fish oil, vitamins, & amino acids", which is seven items against the brand's twenty. Amazon's version collapses corn, wheat, rice and wheat flour into "cereal" and omits Preservatives, Food Colouring, Salmon Flavour, Beet Pulp, Coconut Oil, Chicken Oil, Animal hydrolysate, Fructooligosaccharide and Colostrum.

A buyer checking for colouring or preservatives on Amazon would not find them. The two items most likely to matter to someone reading a label for additives are both present on the manufacturer's list and both absent from the marketplace's. The shorter list is not false, because everything in it is in the longer one, and it is incomplete in exactly the way that changes a purchase decision. Read the brand's own page, not the listing, for an ingredient list.

The brand's protein claim is separate and is not contradicted by any of this. Sheba states "75%+ animal protein" and "40+ essential nutrients" on its own page, and Amazon's title says "41 Essential Nutrients" and "75% + Animal Sourced Protein"; Amazon.in, Sheba Kitten & Adult…. With chicken meal and poultry liver as the base, a high animal-protein share is entirely plausible. The claim is about where the protein comes from, not about salmon.

The marketplace attributes on this brand cannot be trusted

Amazon's product information for Sheba's dry cat food calls it Allergen-Free and Additive-Free, prints its unit price a hundred times too high, and recommends it by ten cat breeds, which is the context any origin field on the same page has to be read in.

The unit price is wrong by a factor of a hundred, with the right answer printed beside it. Amazon's Chicken Flavour 1.5 kg at Rs 935 shows "Rs 62.33 per g (Rs 62.33 /100 g)";. The same number is labelled both per gram and per hundred grams, and only the second is right: Rs 935 over 1,500 g is Rs 0.62 per gram. The Salmon Flavour page does the same thing, reading "Rs 64.47 / g" for a Rs 967 bag. Anyone comparing cat foods on Amazon's own per-unit figure is comparing numbers that are out by two orders of magnitude.

Why a page about cat food spends time on this. The country of origin on these listings is the field this page leads on, and it lives in the same attribute block as everything in that table. A block that calls a food with chicken and wheat in it allergen-free, and a food with declared colouring additive-free, has not earned the benefit of the doubt on which country a pouch came from. That is the honest basis for reporting the China declaration as a declaration rather than as a fact.

One place the attributes are more specific than the brand. Amazon's dry food listings record the age range as "All Life Stages", while the brand's page title calls the same product "Salmon Flavour Adult (1+ Years) Dry Food" and its own product image filename reads "Dry Kitten and Adult Cat";. A food is either formulated for kittens too or it is not, and the brand's own page says both things in the same breath.

Sheba and Whiskas are one company at two prices

Sheba costs about 2.6 times Whiskas per kilogram and both belong to Mars, so a buyer choosing between them is choosing between two price tiers from one owner rather than between two companies' answers.

Both are Mars brands, from a document filed with a securities regulator. A Mars press release on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system lists "Mars brands include: Petcare - PEDIGREE, ROYAL CANIN, WHISKAS, BANFIELD Pet Hospital, NUTRO, SHEBA and DREAMIES". Mars also appears to have created Sheba rather than bought it, so there is no previous owner to disclose, though Mars' own history timeline dates Chappie, Kitekat, PAL, Whiskas, Chum and Kal Kan and has no Sheba entry at all.

Dry against dry, the multiple is 2.61. Rs 623.33 per kilogram for the cheapest Sheba dry against Rs 239.17 for the cheapest Whiskas dry. Wet against wet it is 2.42, at Rs 1,285.71 against Rs 531.25. The two sets were read four days apart, which is noted because prices on these brands do move: Whiskas' flagship fell 31 percent in the six weeks before it was read.

The thing a buyer is actually choosing between. The related searches Google suggests for this brand include "Is Sheba cat food better than Whiskas", which frames it as a contest between rivals. It is a choice between one company's own tiers, both made in Thailand, and for dry food both made at the same Pakchong plant. What the premium buys is a different recipe and format from the same owner and, on dry food, the same factory. Whether the premium is worth paying is a question this page does not answer, because answering it would need first-hand testing.

One independent assessment exists and it is not about the Indian product. Cats.com publishes a Sheba review whose verdict line reads "Sheba cat food isn't flawless, but it's a fairly affordable brand, and it's one of the easiest to find". It assesses the American range. The Indian wet range is at least partly made by a Thai co-packer and the dry food in a Thai Mars plant, so a review of the American recipe is not a reading of the Indian pouch, and this page adopts none of its conclusions.

This is the second time this pattern has turned up in this research, on a different owner. Purepet against Drools runs Rs 155 against Rs 542 per kilogram under one owner, as recorded on the Drools page. Two owners, two species, the same structure. A shortlist that treats a budget brand and a premium brand as independent options is describing a price ladder as a market.

The brand's own Buy Now panel lists three retailers and two are one shop

Sheba's product pages offer three places to buy, Supertails, Petsy and Heads Up For Tails, and petsy.online redirects to zigly.com, so the brand's own panel presents two companies as three.

The panel, as the brand publishes it. Sheba's dry food page carries a Buy Now block linking to supertails.com, petsy.online and headsupfortails.com, and nothing else. Notably it does not list Amazon, where the brand's products are sold and where the largest rating counts sit.

Petsy is Zigly. A request to petsy.online returns HTTP 301 to zigly.com at root, at www and at collection level, and the page that loads declares its canonical URL and its Open Graph URL as zigly.com. Their Sheba catalogues are identical: both return 24 products and the same 13 rows at the same prices, including Rs 570 for the 12-pouch pack and Rs 935 for the chicken dry 1.5 kg.

So a buyer who checks all three links has checked two shops. That matters more here than on Whiskas, where the same redirect appears on a ten-retailer list. On a three-retailer panel, one of the three being a duplicate removes a third of the apparent choice. The brand's panel is not a price comparison and is not presented as one; it is the only distribution guidance Mars gives for this brand, and it over-counts.

No quick-commerce platform appears on the panel, and that shapes what an Indian buyer can get. The five sellers priced here ship nationally, so Sheba is reachable from Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune or Kolkata on a delivery timescale of days rather than minutes. Its stablemate Whiskas is on Zepto and Swiggy Instamart in the metros; nothing found puts Sheba there. For a cat owner who has run out of food this evening, the premium brand is the one that is not available tonight.

All five sellers price in rupees and none of these figures is a converted dollar list. Every price on this page was divided by three exchange rates and the quotients recorded. Only two land near a round dollar, Rs 540 and Rs 967, and both are explained by their own arithmetic rather than by conversion: Rs 600 and Rs 1,099 are the rupee maximum retail prices they are discounted from, and a round rupee figure divided by a near-round divisor lands near a round quotient by construction. The three prices between them behave at every divisor, which is what settles it.

Sheba has no senior food and no renal diet, and those are what people search for

Sheba's Indian range is structured by texture and occasion rather than by life stage, with no senior or veterinary line, while Google's related searches for the brand ask about senior cats and kidney disease.

What people are asking. Google's related searches for "is sheba cat food good" include "Is Sheba cat food good for senior cats", "Is Sheba cat food good for cats with kidney disease" and "Is Sheba cat food good for sensitive stomachs". Those are three questions about conditions, put to a supermarket brand.

What the range offers. Sheba India is organised by texture and occasion, with sub-ranges including Craft Collection, Premium Gravy, Classic Soups, Feast of Flakes, Perfect Portions, Fine Flakes in Jelly, Classics in Terrine and Sauce Lover, in 35 g and 70 g pouches, 85 g cans and trays, and 400 g and 1.5 kg dry. Its dry food is labelled for kitten and adult together. There is no senior range and no therapeutic range.

One point in the brand's favour, on its own terms. Sheba's range is overwhelmingly wet food, and moisture intake genuinely matters to feline urinary health in a way it does not for dogs. A cat that drinks little and eats only dry food takes in less water than one eating pouches. That is a real argument for wet food as a format, it applies to any wet food rather than to this brand specifically, and it is the strongest nutritional thing that can be said here without testing.

No veterinarian is named anywhere. The most visible endorsement on page one is a five-year-old Reddit comment stating that "Sheba has been rated as one of the better wet cat foods by vets". No veterinarian is named in it, and Google separately asks "Is Sheba recommended by vets?" as a People Also Ask question. This directory does not pass on a vet-recommended claim without naming who made it, so the claim is reported and attributed and not repeated as a recommendation. The standard is on our how we test page.

What Indian law requires on a Sheba pack

Imported cat food containing material of animal origin enters India under a permit from the animal husbandry department rather than the food regulator, and no compulsory nutritional standard applies to it at all.

Pet food is not legally food in India. The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 defines food for human consumption and excludes animal feed, so the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India sets no compulsory nutritional standard for cat food. That is the frame for every claim on this brand, including the 75 percent animal protein figure and the 41 nutrients count, neither of which is counted against a standard anyone can check.

The Indian standard that would cover the dry food is voluntary. IS 11968:2019 is the Bureau of Indian Standards specification for extruded pet food and conformity is not compulsory. No BIS, ISI or IS 11968 reference was found on sheba.in or on any Sheba listing read for this page.

The regime that does apply sits with the animal husbandry department. The Animal Quarantine and Certification Service publishes India's import procedures, names the Pet Food Products of Animal Origin (Import into India) Order, 2008, and states that a Sanitary Import Permit is "issued for high risk products" listed in notification SO 2666(E) dated 16.10.14, with pet foods as item 6 on that list. Required documents include an "Official health certificate from the country of origin";. Sheba's range is tuna, chicken, prawn, bonito and sasami, so it is a product of animal origin on any reading.

Which gives the four-country problem a documentary consequence. An official health certificate is issued by the veterinary authority of the exporting country, so every imported consignment has one country attached to it in a document that exists. If a Sheba pouch was made in China it entered under a permit naming China. The question has an answer; it is simply not public, and the label does not carry it.

The labelling duty is where the origin field comes from. The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules require a pre-packaged commodity to declare the country of origin where it is imported, together with the name and address of the manufacturer, packer or importer. The requirement is singular and the pack sizes it applies to run from a 35 gram pouch to a 1.5 kilogram bag. Four listings answer it four different ways.

No FSSAI licence number appears anywhere, so the nutrition claims stay unnamed against any authority. Not on sheba.in, including on the product page whose full markup was read for exactly that field, and not on any retail listing read here. An importer and marketer of pet food in India would be expected to hold a licence and nothing suggests otherwise, so this is a disclosure gap rather than a compliance finding. Across every brand in this research the only licence number found on a pack belongs to Henlo.

One date this page will not print. Sheba's own Indian copy says its classic range "has kept our feline friends purrrring for over 30 years";, and Mars' history timeline gives founding years for six sibling brands and none for Sheba. Thirty years is a floor, not a founding date, so no founding year appears here until one is sourced.

What we could not establish

The 12 questions below are the ones this page could not answer, and they are published rather than left out. Each one names what was looked for, where, why it could not be settled, and the test that would show it if the answer were there.

Which of Hungary, Thailand or China any given Sheba pouch came from

A single reliable country of origin for the wet range

Looked in: the Supertails listing, which gives Hungary twice and names a Thai manufacturer, Amazon B087DH5SCF, which gives China and names no maker, two further Amazon pouch listings, which state no origin and give the manufacturer as Mars India, sheba.in, which publishes no country of origin on any product page

Why it could not be settled: This is the central open question and the sources actively disagree rather than merely being silent. The dry food has a clean answer, Thailand with a named Mars plant, and the wet range does not. Reading any one of the four declarations as the answer would be picking a source rather than establishing a fact.

What would show otherwise: A photograph of a pack panel for one wet SKU giving one country would settle it for that SKU, as would an import document naming the country of origin.

Whether the Hungary declaration refers to a real Hungarian plant

A Hungarian manufacturing address for any Sheba product

Looked in: the Supertails page, which gives Hungary as both Country of Origin and Manufacturing Location and names no Hungarian address, the same page's manufacturer field, which gives a Thai company and a Thai address, sheba.in, which names no plant anywhere

Why it could not be settled: Mars operates plants across Europe and a Hungarian site is entirely plausible, so the declaration is not obviously an error. It is also impossible to reconcile with the only manufacturer named on the same page. Either the origin field is wrong, or the manufacturer field is, and nothing available says which.

What would show otherwise: A Hungarian plant address on a Sheba pack, or a corrected listing, would resolve which field is in error.

Which Sheba SKUs Pattaya Food Industries Ltd makes, and its relationship to Mars

A published supply relationship, or a product list, connecting the two companies

Looked in: the Supertails listing, which names the company as manufacturer of one wet SKU, an earlier reading of an Amazon Sheba Deluxe listing carrying the same street address without a company name, sheba.in and Mars' own pages, which do not mention the company

Why it could not be settled: Two independent retail sources put that address on Sheba products and one of them names the company, which is enough to establish that an outside Thai manufacturer makes part of the range. How much of the range, and on what basis, is not established, and contract relationships are routinely not published.

What would show otherwise: A pack panel naming the company on a second SKU, or any published statement from either company, would extend it.

Why the same product has two different published ingredient lists

An explanation for the seven-item Amazon list against the twenty-item brand list

Looked in: sheba.in, which gives twenty items including Preservatives and Food Colouring, Amazon B0C1HKD531, which gives seven and omits both, neither page, which flags or explains the difference

Why it could not be settled: The shorter list contains nothing absent from the longer one, so it reads as a summary rather than a contradiction. It omits precisely the two items a label-reading buyer checks for. Whether that is a marketplace character limit, a stale submission or a summary by choice is not established, and no intent is attributed.

What would show otherwise: A pack panel photograph would establish which list matches the printed one.

Whether the Allergen-Free and Additive-Free attributes come from the brand or the marketplace

The source of the attribute values on the Amazon listings

Looked in: the Amazon product information blocks, which carry both claims, sheba.in, which makes neither claim and lists Preservatives and Food Colouring, the same Amazon blocks, which also contain plainly wrong values such as Diet Type Raw for cooked food

Why it could not be settled: Marketplace attribute fields are populated through catalogue systems and may originate with a seller, an aggregator or the brand, and nothing on the page says which. The distinction matters because one reading makes it a brand claim and the other makes it catalogue noise. This page treats them as the listing's, not the brand's, and says so.

What would show otherwise: A brand statement, or the same claim appearing on sheba.in or a pack, would make it the brand's.

Thai FDA recall history for the Pakchong plant and the Samut Sakhon site

A Thai regulator's recall register, searched for both named sites

Looked in: the register checks on this page, which cover the United States only

Why it could not be settled: Both named manufacturers are in Thailand, so the Thai regulator is the jurisdictionally correct place to check and it has not been searched. Searching an American register alone is not sufficient diligence for a product made in Thailand, and two nil results from the wrong jurisdiction are not a substitute for a search that has not happened.

What would show otherwise: A search of the Thai FDA's notices for Mars Petcare (Thailand) Co Ltd and Pattaya Food Industries Ltd, with a control that returns pet food entries, would close it.

What the EU RASFF portal holds for Sheba or Mars' Hungarian operations

A search of the European Commission's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed

Looked in: the RASFF Window search screen, which displayed a planned maintenance notice on an attempt made for a sibling brand, this page's register checks, which cover the United States only

Why it could not be settled: One of the four declared countries is in the European Union, which makes RASFF directly relevant to this brand rather than a completeness exercise. The portal was unavailable when last tried. An unavailable register is not an empty one.

What would show otherwise: A RASFF search for Sheba and for Mars' Hungarian plants, with a control returning pet food notifications, would close it.

Whether any FSSAI licence number appears on a Sheba pack or listing

A licence number on the brand site or any retail listing

Looked in: sheba.in, including the dry food page whose full markup was read for this field, the Amazon listings for the dry 1.5 kg and the wet pouches, the Supertails, Heads Up For Tails, Petsworld and Zigly listings

Why it could not be settled: An importer and marketer of pet food in India would be expected to hold a licence and nothing found suggests otherwise. What is established is only that none of the pages read publishes a number, so a reader cannot check it. The same held for every Mars-group brand checked in this research.

What would show otherwise: A licence number printed on a pack or published by the marketer would close it.

A founding year for Sheba

A dated origin for the brand from Mars or any primary source

Looked in: Mars' own history timeline, which dates six sibling brands and has no Sheba entry, sheba.in, whose nearest statement is that its classic range has kept cats purring for over 30 years

Why it could not be settled: Over 30 years is a floor and not a date, and a brand hub that printed a founding year on the strength of a marketing line would be inventing precision. The absence is recorded rather than filled, and it is mildly notable that a company which dates Chappie to 1935 does not date this brand at all.

What would show otherwise: A dated entry on Mars' own timeline, a trademark registration date, or a company statement would establish it.

The CIN and directors of MARS International India Pvt. Ltd. from the MCA record

The company's registration details from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs

Looked in: aggregator records, which give CIN U74899DL1994PTC059114 and incorporation on 19 May 1994, sheba.in, which names the company and publishes no CIN

Why it could not be settled: The aggregator figure is held in the research notes and is not published here, because a Delhi jurisdiction and a U74899 activity class both warrant checking against the primary record before a CIN goes in front of readers. Ownership by Mars is separately established from a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, so nothing on this page depends on it.

What would show otherwise: The MCA master data for the company would confirm or correct the number, the jurisdiction and the activity class.

Whether any Sheba consignment entered under a valid sanitary import permit

A permit number, a veterinary health certificate reference, or the text of the 2008 Order

Looked in: the AQCS procedures page, which names the Order and the high-risk list without reproducing the Order's text, every listing read for this page, none of which references a permit

Why it could not be settled: The regime is established and its application to any particular consignment is not published anywhere found. No register of permits issued under the Order was located. That is a transparency limit of the regime rather than a finding about this company, and it would read the same for every imported pet food on the Indian market.

What would show otherwise: The 2008 Order read in full, plus a permit number on an import document, would establish both halves.

Whether any independent assessment covers the Indian Sheba range

A laboratory analysis, feeding trial or ingredient review of the products sold in India

Looked in: Cats.com's Sheba review, which is American, the Indian results on page one, which are a five-year-old Reddit thread, a five-year-old Quora thread, a retailer's blog and three retailer pages, the brand's own page, which shows two reviews through a Bazaarvoice widget

Why it could not be settled: The Indian wet range is made at least partly by a Thai co-packer and the dry food in a Thai Mars plant, so a review of the American recipe is not a review of the Indian pouch. A retailer blog asserting that the brand meets AAFCO standards is a retailer's claim about an American standard, not an assessment. The two reviews on the brand's own page are reportable only with that denominator.

What would show otherwise: A published analysis of an Indian-market Sheba pack, naming the SKU and the method, would close it.