What’s in it
The top ingredients, in order: Wheat Flour, Wheat Morsels, Meat and Bone Meal, Milk, Beef Fat (preserved with Tocopherols), Salt, Natural Flavor, Poultry By-Product Meal, Dicalcium Phosphate, Brewers Dried Yeast, Malted Barley Flour, Sodium Metabisulfite, followed by four artificial colors (Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 2), DL-methionine, and BHA as a preservative. Each Medium-size biscuit is about 20 kcal.
Milk-Bone has been manufactured since 1908 and is currently produced by The J.M. Smucker Company. The Original Biscuit is a baked flour-based dog treat marketed with “Helps Clean Teeth” language on the packaging — this is a biscuit shape / texture claim, not an independently-verified dental-efficacy claim. The product does carry the AAFCO “intermittent or supplemental feeding only” statement, which is the correct label for a treat.
The good stuff
The product is cheap and widely available, which is not a rubric-scoring factor but is worth naming. The size-tier lineup (Small, Medium, Large, Jumbo) earns +2 on our rubric because size-matching reduces choking hazard and is the right thing for a biscuit-category treat. The AAFCO supplemental-feeding statement is present and correctly worded. Tocopherols are used to preserve the beef fat, which is the natural-preservation step inside an otherwise synthetic formulation.
That is essentially the rubric’s complete “positives” list for this product. We are not going to invent virtues that the ingredient panel does not support. Shop on Amazon →
The not-so-good stuff
Wheat flour and wheat morsels are the first two ingredients, which means wheat is the dominant dry-weight component of the biscuit. Our rubric deducts −6 for wheat, corn, soy, or rice in the top three ingredient positions of a treat (−3 specifically for biscuits where flour is structurally necessary, but the double-wheat entry intensifies the signal). More importantly: wheat as the first ingredient means this is a starch-delivery product with a small amount of animal-derived flavoring added, not a protein-led treat by any honest reading.
Poultry by-product meal appears at position eight. “By-product meal” is species-disclosed (we know it’s poultry) but anatomically by-product rather than whole muscle — it is the rendered leftover material (feet, viscera, undeveloped eggs) after muscle meat has been removed. Our rubric scores named by-product meal at −3, a tier between named muscle meal (+6) and unnamed by-product (−15).
BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) is used as a preservative in the biscuit matrix. BHA has been listed as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program, and while the doses found in pet treats are well below acute-toxicity thresholds, our rubric deducts −10 points for any BHA presence because cleaner preservation alternatives (mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract, vitamin E) are available and used by competing manufacturers.
Four artificial colors are added: Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, and Blue 2. Our rubric deducts −6 per artificial color, for a cumulative −24. Artificial colors in pet treats exist entirely for human visual appeal at the point of sale — dogs cannot distinguish them, and they contribute nothing nutritional. Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are restricted or banned in some European jurisdictions. Red 40 is the most-consumed artificial dye in the U.S. food supply and has been associated with behavioral concerns in controlled pediatric studies; the pet-food application has not been studied to the same depth.
Sodium metabisulfite is a sulfite preservative that can trigger adverse reactions in a small population of sensitive dogs. The product has had two documented recalls in its history (2015 for low levels of mold risk; 2019 for elevated thyroid hormone in a limited production run — the 2019 recall affected a different product line in the Milk-Bone family, not this Original Biscuit SKU). No active FDA enforcement is outstanding as of this review’s verification date.
How it compares
Milk-Bone D/38 is at the bottom of our initial Treats Batch A. Within the biscuit function class, the product represents the “legacy mass-market biscuit” archetype: cheap wheat-forward starch matrix with synthetic preservation and artificial color. Cleaner-panel biscuits exist (Old Mother Hubbard, Fruitables Crunchy) and will score meaningfully higher when we add them to our database.
For the dental-cleaning use case specifically, Greenies Original Regular (C/58) sits 20 points higher and is backed by a VOHC Seal of Acceptance that Milk-Bone does not carry. If dental benefit is what you’re buying a biscuit for, Greenies is the better-evidenced tool. For general-purpose training, Zuke’s Mini Naturals Chicken (B/78) is a 40-point-higher option with chicken as the first ingredient, no artificial colors, and a natural preservation system. For a premium reward, Charlee Bear Grain-Free Turkey Liver (A/90) and Vital Essentials Freeze-Dried Beef Liver (A/93) are the A-tier alternatives.
The bottom line
Milk-Bone Original Biscuit earns a D grade (38/100) on KibbleIQ’s treats rubric. The formulation is a mass-market legacy biscuit with wheat-first ingredient order, BHA preservation, four artificial colors, and by-product meal — each of those is a separate rubric deduction, and they stack. We are not suggesting that an occasional Milk-Bone will harm your dog; the ingredient concerns are chronic-exposure concerns, and an occasional biscuit within the 10%-of-daily-calories ceiling is unlikely to cause acute issues. But for comparable shelf price, Zuke’s, Charlee Bear, or Vital Essentials are meaningfully cleaner choices — and if the goal is dental, Greenies Original Regular is the evidence-backed option. Shop on Amazon →