Does a video show evidence that dog food is being made with ground up cardboard as a main ingredient? No, that's not true: The video on social media features clips showing real scenes from several sources including dog food manufacturing plants and trash recycling facilities. There is no evidence the ground cardboard pulp shown in one clip is going into the dog food puree shown in another. The video fails to back up the claim with important information such as a dog food brand name, or place where this is purportedly happening.
One copy of the video (archived here) was published on X by "Truthseeker" @Xx17965797N on August 18, 2025. It was captioned:
🤬Cardbox in Dogfood..
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of Truthseeker post on X)
The 1:48-minute-long video comprised of thirty short clips, begins with the narrator stating:
This is the biggest scam in the world. They buy cardboard boxes at rock bottom prices and turn them into expensive dog food.
Lead Stories captured key frame screenshots from the video, and with Google Lens reverse image search, we were able to trace some, but not all, of the clips back to their source. The identifiable clips come from unrelated sources, indicating this video is a deceptive mix of scenes which do not provide proof that dog food is being made from cardboard pulp as claimed in the video's voiceover.
Scenes which appear at 0:11, 0:24 and 0:28 were traced back to a TikTok account @waste.disposal.eq (pictured below) featuring waste disposal equipment (the loader archived here, and the sorting line archived here). Some videos have text captioning in Indonesian and a watermark for Guoxin Machine, a Chinese manufacturer of industrial scale waste sorting equipment. No videos on this account indicate there is any dog food processing happening at the same location where the trash is sorted.
(Image source: Lead Stories composite image with @waste.disposal.eq TikTok screenshots)
The text on the video of the loader (above left) translates:
How to create wealth from waste with waste sorting lines.
It's unbelievable how profitable waste can be.
The text caption from the sorting line video (above right) translates:
How to turn waste into wealth with a waste disposal machine
A young Indonesian man and his friend recycle household waste in the city
A scene at the 1:10 minute mark of the Truthseeker video shows a conveyor belt carrying brown kibble in a well lit facility which appears sparkling clean. This clip traces back to a video (archived here) posted on TikTok by @rose.w573 on July 14, 2025 (pictured below). The caption reads:
The order is ongoing, place your order early and we will make it for you as soon as possible!#dogfood #catfood
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of @Rose.w573 post on TikTok)
Another video (archived here) posted by the @rose.w573 account gives background information about the Oudi Pet Food Co (archived here). The company's pet food manufacturing plant in Shenzhou, China states it is equipped to fill custom orders for pet food brands. No videos on this account suggest that cardboard is used in the dog food recipe or that there is municipal waste recycling taking place at the facility where the dog food is made.
A clip at 0:53 seconds in shows a man pouring a metal pail of raw eggs into a churning hopper of pink puree (pictured below with red outline). Although Lead Stories was unable to identify the source of this footage or the pink puree, we did find a TikTok account, @bbabba74, which posts almost exclusively egg pouring scenes from this plant (below left). The workers wear the same blue aprons, have the same metal pails (below right), and the shelving in the background is the same. Again, there is no evidence on the @bbabba74 account that the food processing plant where the eggs are poured is associated with a recycling facility.
(Image source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from @Xx17965797N post on X and @bbabba74 on TikTok)
