Senior Merchant, Veg/Alt Ingredients for Pet Food
August 04, 2026
Iodine is one of the smallest entries on a pet food label and one of the most consequential. Pets can’t make it, yet their bodies can’t function properly without it. Understanding this trace mineral, and where it comes from, is becoming one of the more important conversations in pet nutrition.
Iodine is an essential trace element pets use to build thyroid hormones, the chemical messengers that set the pace of their metabolism. They influence how pets burn energy, grow, regulate body temperature and develop.
Fall short and the thyroid can’t keep up, leading to changes in energy use, body weight and growth in pets. But there’s a catch pet food formulators need to consider: the body works within a narrow comfort zone, and too much iodine is as disruptive as too little. The goal isn’t simply more iodine, it’s the right amount, every time.
Long before iodized salt, the ocean was the planet’s iodine reservoir, and seaweed concentrates it better than almost anything else we eat. That makes ocean-grown ingredients a natural, renewable way to bring iodine into the food and feed supply chain — closing the nutrition gap with something the sea already does well.
Here’s the part that matters for anyone building a product: not all seaweed carries the same iodine load, and the range is enormous. Slow-growing brown seaweeds like Laminaria and Ascophyllum, which mature over 12 to 24 months, can hold thousands of milligrams of iodine per kilogram — and the level swings from batch to batch. A fast-growing red seaweed like Kappaphycus alvarezii, harvested in just 30 to 45 days, carries a small fraction of that, with a far steadier profile.
To put numbers on it: Laminaria can run near 2,500 mg/kg, while Kappaphycus sits closer to 90. For a pet food formulator, that variability is the real challenge. Too much iodine can stress the thyroid and kidneys; too little misses the nutritional mark. Consistency is what turns a promising raw material into a dependable ingredient with multiple benefits for pets.
That’s the gap our new white paper sets out to close. Iodine Levels in Seaweed and the Benefits of Fermented Kappaphycus Ingredients, from Scoular and our partner Seadling, breaks down how iodine varies across seaweed species and how a controlled fermentation process delivers a low, stable and predictable iodine profile you can build new pet products around.
Inside, you’ll find:
Download the full white paper to see the science — and how we can help connect it to your shelf.
Learn more about our Fermented Dried Seaweed ingredients.