HypoallergenicCats
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Editorial

Our editorial process

How a page on this site actually gets made — from research to publication to correction.

1. Sources we cite

We rank sources roughly in this order of trust:

  • Peer-reviewed journals— PubMed-indexed studies on Fel d 1 levels, breed genetics, allergen immunotherapy, and clinical management of cat allergy. When a study contradicts conventional wisdom, we say so explicitly.
  • Breed associations— TICA (The International Cat Association), CFA (Cat Fanciers’ Association), and recognised national clubs for breed standards and health-test requirements.
  • Government & academic veterinary sources — AAHA, AVMA, university veterinary schools.
  • Real owners on public forums— Reddit, breed-specific subreddits, dedicated communities. We quote with attribution and link to the original thread so you can read the full context.

What we don’t cite as primary sources: breeder websites (marketing), commercial pet-food brand blogs (marketing), and other affiliate review sites (circular references).

2. How we tier breeds

“Hypoallergenic” is a spectrum, not a guarantee. We split the breeds on this site into two evidence tiers so you can weigh the science alongside the marketing.

  • Tier 1 — Research-backed. The breed is supported by published Fel d 1 research andby long-standing consensus across allergy clinics, veterinary references, and breed registries. For some Tier 1 breeds (notably Siberian) there are direct per-breed measurements; for others (Russian Blue, Balinese) the published evidence covers “hypoallergenic breeds” as a group and the breed itself is named in the broader literature consensus rather than measured in isolation. We treat this combination — some measurement plus durable expert consensus — as the strongest signal currently available. It is still not a guarantee for any individual cat.
  • Tier 2 — Low-shed / Anecdotal. Commonly listed as “hypoallergenic” on the basis of short, curly, or minimal coats that shed less — which means less dander reaches your couch. There is no breed-specific Fel d 1 study to back it up, and many allergic owners still react. We include them because the body of owner reports is large enough to be useful, but we flag them so you don’t treat thin evidence as strong evidence.

What you won’t see on this site: breeds where the evidence is contradictory or the “hypoallergenic” label is mostly cosmetic (for example, hairless breeds whose exposed skin actually disperses more Fel d 1 into the home). We took those out rather than caveat them to death.

Why there’s no “allergen 4/10” number on our breed pages. Measured per-cat Fel d 1 production data exists for a small number of breeds (most directly Siberian, with broader studies covering Russian Blue and Balinese). It does not exist, in the peer-reviewed literature, for the eight Tier 2 breeds in our directory. A 1-10 numeric score would have implied a precision we cannot back with citations, so we replaced it with a two-state qualitative signal: below-average Fel d 1 (measured) for the breeds where the science supports it, and low-shedding (anecdotal) for the rest. If you want to filter the directory to measured-only breeds, the Measured Fel d 1 only chip on the /breeds page does exactly that.

3. How we vet products

A product earns a recommendation on this site only after it clears four checks:

  1. Mechanism plausibility— is there a published reason this product would help an allergic household? (For example, Purina LiveClear has peer-reviewed data on Fel d 1 binding; many “hypoallergenic” wipes do not.)
  2. Real-world owner reports— a minimum of 20 substantive reviews across at least two independent platforms (not just Amazon).
  3. Availability & support— the product is reliably in stock, ships to North America, and has a working returns process. We don’t recommend vapourware.
  4. Editorial fit— it solves a problem we actually discuss on this site. We don’t add products to pad commissions.

The commercial side of how products link out is covered in our affiliate disclosure. Short version: commissions do not change rankings, and we will recommend a better non-affiliate product over a worse commission product every time.

4. How we keep content current

The web rots. Studies get superseded; breeders move; products change formulation; prices drift. Our maintenance policy:

  • Every published page carries a visible last updated date.
  • We re-check linked studies, breeder resources, and product pages periodically — and immediately when a reader flags something wrong.
  • When a finding changes meaningfully (a new study, a recalled product, a closed breeder), we update the page, note the change at the top, and bump the date.
  • When a page is too stale to fix in place, we archive it with a clear “outdated” notice rather than silently deleting it.

5. Corrections

We will get things wrong. When we do:

  • We fix the error.
  • We add a dated correction note on the affected page — we do not silently overwrite.
  • We credit the reader who flagged it (if they want credit).

Spot something wrong? Email hello@hypoallergeniccats.org. Include the URL and what you think is incorrect. We aim to respond within a week, sooner for safety-relevant errors.

6. Who writes (and the byline policy)

Articles on this site are produced by a small collaborative team and published under a single editorial byline: R. Tanaka, Senior Editor. This is an editorial persona, not one specific person.

We chose this approach for two reasons:

  • A single, consistent byline keeps the editorial voice and standards uniform across every guide — the reader knows what “a HypoallergenicCats article” sounds like.
  • Health-adjacent content should be more durable than any one author. A page about cat allergies should remain readable and correctable as contributors come and go.

We chose to be explicit about this rather than fabricate a roster of fictional individual authors. If the site grows enough that named expertise becomes valuable, we’ll add real contributor pages with credentials. Until then, our credibility lives in our citations — click any of them and you can check our work directly.

7. What we don’t do

  • We don’t accept money to alter, hide, or feature content.
  • We use AI as a research and drafting tool, like any modern writing team. But every published page is written, edited, and signed off by a human editor — we don’t run an AI content farm, and pages aren’t shipped without a human reading them end-to-end.
  • We don’t scrape or republish other publications’ work. Quotes are short, attributed, and linked.
  • We don’t make medical claims. If a page sounds like it does, treat that as a bug and email us — we’ll rewrite it.

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