Please Leave Us A Message
Privacy statement: Your privacy is very important to Us. Our company promises not to disclose your personal information to any external company with out your explicit permission.
US law has no separate pet-bowl category: the FDA defines food as "articles used for food or drink for man or other animals," so a bowl touching kibble is regulated exactly like a bowl touching soup.
That definition is why pet bowl FDA 21 CFR 177.1520 compliance is the correct place to start. Section 177.1520 does not approve bowls; it specifies the polymer. Item 1.1 polypropylene must sit at 0.880–0.913 g/cm³ density with a melting point of 160–180 °C, a maximum extractable fraction of 6.4% in n-hexane at reflux, and a maximum soluble fraction of 9.8% in xylene at 25 °C. Those four numbers are the resin's fingerprint. A supplier who says "food grade PP" without naming the grade and producing the resin maker's CoA is guessing, and you are paying for the guess.
Purity is judged against intended use, and intended use for a pet is not a softer version of intended use for a human — which is the part of pet bowl FDA 21 CFR 177.1520 compliance no clause can spell out for you. Dogs detect odours humans cannot, so a residual level that passes unnoticed in a soup bowl can make a dog refuse food. Pets also eat one diet from one bowl for years, while a human's exposure is diluted across dozens of packages. Higher exposure per kilogram, sharper nose: the bar goes up, not down.
Buyers who ask are plastic dog bowls FDA food safe for pets usually expect one document. You need five.
| Document | Issued by | What a credible version contains |
| Resin CoA + food-contact statement | The resin producer, not the moulder | Grade name, lot number, 177.1520 item number, density and MFR |
| Colourant statement | Masterbatch maker | Pigments listed under 21 CFR 178.3297 (EU: Resolution AP(89)1), loading % |
| Migration test report | ISO 17025 lab | Simulant, temperature, duration, the tested SKU, measured values against limits |
| Declaration of Compliance | The converter | Regulation clauses cited, material breakdown by part, conditions of use |
| GMP evidence | The factory | EU 2023/2006 or ISO 22000/FSSC 22000, plus "food-contact material only" on the press |
The first row carries most of the weight: pet bowl FDA 21 CFR 177.1520 compliance belongs to whoever polymerised the resin, so a moulder forwarding you an "FDA report" is passing on someone else's paper. What the moulder owes you is the last two rows — a DoC naming the clauses, and a press that never runs black regrind. COLOSI issues its DoC per SKU for this reason, split into body, ring and print.
✅ Bottom line: A bowl is compliant when its resin, its colourant and its conversion are each documented — a certificate proves nothing on its own.
Legally, no — and that is precisely why European buyers still demand the tests.
Regulation (EC) 178/2002 defines food as something ingested by humans; feed is defined separately, and 1935/2004 and 10/2011 both hang off that definition. The Commission confirmed the split in its December 2025 bisphenol guidance (C/2025/6721), listing pet-food contact materials as outside the scope of (EU) 2024/3190. There is no harmonised EU plastics rule for a dog bowl.
What fills the vacuum is national law plus retailer specification. Germany's LFGB is a food and feed code: §30 and §31 forbid any transfer that changes taste, smell or composition, and the BfR recommendations are what inspectors measure against — BfR VII for polypropylene, BfR IX for colourants, BfR XV for a silicone anti-slip ring. France and Italy add their own lists. So a private-label buyer writes "EU 10/2011 + LFGB" into the spec sheet because it is the only testable benchmark in existence, and every serious supplier signs it voluntarily. Treat it as commercially mandatory, legally voluntary.
Yes — and the pellet is almost never what fails. Nearly every non-conformity happens downstream, after the resin has been approved:
All five happen after the resin is approved, so the question that decides the shipment is whether the finished, decorated, assembled bowl was tested. That is why Sanmen Dexin Machinery Co., Ltd. keeps mould design, injection and assembly in one plant: decoration stays out of the food-contact zone instead of being tested around.
| Test | Simulant / condition | Limit | Typical cost, Chinese lab |
| Overall migration, dry kibble | Simulant E (Tenax), EN 1186-13 | 10 mg/dm² equivalent, reported in mg/kg | US$120–180, ~5 weeks |
| Overall migration, water | Simulant A, OM2: 10 days at 40 °C | 10 mg/dm² | US$20–40 |
| Overall migration, fatty treats | Simulant D2 or 95% ethanol, OM2 | 10 mg/dm² | US$40–80 |
| Sensory, odour and taste | DIN 10955, 24 h at 23 °C | ≤2.5 on a 0–5 scale | US$15–30 |
| Primary aromatic amines | 3% acetic acid | not detectable (<0.01 mg/kg) | US$50–80 |
| Full 10/2011 package | All applicable simulants | — | US$250–450 per SKU |
Two things drive the invoice. Every colour and every material is a separate SKU — a three-colour range with a silicone ring is six reports, not one. And kibble is dry food, so Tenax is the correct medium; most Chinese labs subcontract it at five weeks. A quote offering "10% ethanol" is cheaper because it tests the wrong thing, which is the real answer to is food grade PP safe for dog bowls: the medium matters as much as the molecule.
✅ Bottom line: Budget per colour and per material, not per product — a report expires the day the masterbatch changes.
Q: Does a pet bowl need its own FDA food contact notification? A: No. An FCN covers a new substance, and polypropylene is already cleared by 177.1520 — so are plastic dog bowls FDA food safe for pets is answered by the resin and by how the bowl was made, not by a filing. Ask for the resin CoA and a DoC that names the clause.
Q: How long is a test report valid? A: A report dies when the resin grade, masterbatch, factory or process changes — and when the regulation moves; 10/2011 has been amended repeatedly, most recently on documentation and purity. Retail buyers reject anything older than two years.
Q: Is food grade PP safe for dog bowls that go in a dishwasher? A: Only if the bowl was tested for that condition. Dishwashing is repeated use near 70 °C, so the declared condition becomes OM3 (2 hours at 70 °C), and moulded-in stress must be annealed out or the base warps. COLOSI treats the dishwasher claim as a separate declaration, not a marketing line.
Send your bowl drawing, target market and colour count, and COLOSI will return the file set first — DoC, resin CoA, colourant statement and a test plan naming the correct simulant for your fill. Prices follow, because a quote without those documents is a number you cannot defend to your retailer.
We are a custom injection moulder, not a trader: mould design, tooling and assembly under one roof since 2013, OEM/ODM from 3,000 pcs per colour, factory-direct wholesale pricing. Ask for the compliance checklist and compare it with what your current supplier sends.
Published: October 2026 | Sanmen Dexin Machinery Co., Ltd.
Email to this supplier
Privacy statement: Your privacy is very important to Us. Our company promises not to disclose your personal information to any external company with out your explicit permission.
Fill in more information so that we can get in touch with you faster
Privacy statement: Your privacy is very important to Us. Our company promises not to disclose your personal information to any external company with out your explicit permission.