The scores
Vital Essentials Freeze-Dried Beef Liver: A/93 — Excellent. Single-ingredient freeze-dried beef liver. The platonic ideal of a dog treat — nothing the rubric can deduct from.
Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch: A/92 — Excellent. Eight-ingredient panel built around grass-fed beef and seven beef-derived organ and structural meats, with pumpkin seed and tocopherols as the only non-beef inclusions.
How the ingredients compare
The leading ingredients are the structural difference between these two treats:
Vital Essentials: Beef Liver (1 ingredient).
Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch: Beef, Beef Liver, Beef Kidney, Beef Heart, Beef Tripe, Beef Bone, Pumpkin Seed, Tocopherols (Preservative) (8 ingredients).
These are the two highest-scoring freeze-dried dog treats on KibbleIQ, separated by a single rubric point. Vital Essentials is the simplest possible formulation: USDA-inspected beef liver, freeze-dried, broken into bite-sized pieces. No second ingredient. Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch takes a different design philosophy — whole-prey emulation through multi-organ inclusion. Seven of the eight ingredients are beef-derived (muscle + liver + kidney + heart + tripe + bone), pumpkin seed adds a whole-food plant micronutrient, and tocopherols (vitamin E) provide natural preservation. Both products are AAFCO-supplemental-feeding-only labeled. Both avoid BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin, glycerin, propylene glycol, and synthetic colors. Both are freeze-dried at low temperature without heat denaturation.
Where Vital Essentials pulls ahead
Single-ingredient simplicity for elimination diets: Vital Essentials is one ingredient. For dogs in active food-sensitivity diagnostic workups, on novel-protein elimination trials, or with multiple confirmed allergens, a single-organ-meat treat is the most defensible possible choice. Stella & Chewy’s adds pumpkin seed and the multi-organ stack, which is fine for healthy dogs but adds complexity for diagnostic feeding.
Sourcing transparency: Vital Essentials sources its beef liver from USDA-inspected facilities and discloses the country of origin (USA). The single-source supply chain is easier to trace than a multi-organ blend. Shop Vital Essentials on Amazon →
Rubric ceiling for single-ingredient class: Vital Essentials sits at the top of the single-ingredient-freeze-dried function class with no possible deductions. The score reflects the rubric’s ceiling for simplicity. Stella & Chewy’s is one rubric point lower because the multi-ingredient class has a different scoring envelope — even the cleanest possible multi-ingredient treat starts from a slightly different ceiling.
Where Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch holds its own
Whole-prey-emulating multi-organ profile: Beef + liver + kidney + heart + tripe + bone closely resembles the proportional composition of a whole prey animal a wild canid would consume. Each organ contributes different micronutrients: liver for vitamin A and B12, kidney for selenium, heart for taurine and CoQ10, tripe for digestive enzymes and probiotics, bone for calcium and phosphorus. The multi-organ profile delivers a broader micronutrient stack than single-organ liver alone.
HPP (high-pressure processing) documented for raw safety: Stella & Chewy’s discloses that Carnivore Crunch undergoes high-pressure processing as a pathogen-reduction step before freeze-drying, which addresses the raw-pathogen concern (salmonella, listeria, E. coli) that has affected unprocessed raw products historically. Vital Essentials uses a different freeze-drying pipeline; the HPP documentation is a Stella & Chewy’s-specific food-safety credential.
Multiple protein options in the broader product line: Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch is sold in beef, chicken, turkey, salmon, lamb, and duck variants — useful for protein rotation feeding. Vital Essentials Freeze-Dried Beef Liver is single-protein single-organ; the brand offers other freeze-dried treats but the beef liver SKU is the one we’ve scored at A/93. Shop Stella & Chewy’s on Amazon →
The bottom line
Both are A-grade freeze-dried treats and the one-point gap between them is structural to the rubric’s function-class system rather than a meaningful quality difference. Vital Essentials is the cleaner pick for elimination diets, single-protein feeding, or dogs with confirmed beef tolerance and a need for simple panel reasoning. Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch is the better whole-prey-emulating profile for dogs on rotation diets or for owners who value the multi-organ micronutrient stack and the documented HPP food-safety step. Many raw-feeders stock both and rotate.
Read our full reviews of Vital Essentials Freeze-Dried Beef Liver and Stella & Chewy’s Carnivore Crunch for the complete ingredient-by-ingredient breakdown.