19/11/2024
PET FOOD ONLY - NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
I just received an email from a lovely supportive customer that wanted to know why our packaging displayed "Pet Food Only - Not for Human Consumption". She felt that this statement meant that the ingredients must be of very poor quality and processed in a knackery instead of a human grade approved abattoir facility.
I have posted about this a while ago, but I thought it was a good opportunity to re-post again for those that are also curious.
Regardless of whether the ingredients in a pet food are completely poor-quality rubbish or contain premium quality cuts of Certified Organic meats like our products, by law and to obtain Safe Food Accreditation, as a pet food manufacturer we are all required to put this statement on our packaging. They also have strict rules on the size of the text and they ensure that it is large enough to fit their size guidelines, and it is big !.
As I replied to the customer “Please rest assured all our ingredients used are Certified Organic and 100% human grade. Our premises and handling practices are also fit for human consumption and approved with Safe Food QLD and the Australian Certified Organic (ACO). Currently no other raw meat pet food manufacturer in Australia has both accreditations. All our suppliers also have these accreditations which includes the strict monitoring of clean and safe handling practices. This also includes our abattoirs who kill and supply all Organic Butchers, restaurants and the like in QLD, as being Certified Organic most of us have the same suppliers as there is not that many of them. There is no such thing as a knackery when it comes to Certified Organic meat processing.
A little further background on our operations…. all our products are regularly laboratory tested for bad bacteria as required by both of our independent regulatory bodies (Safe Food QLD & ACO). To date all tests have come back clean.
Both Certifying bodies can make "surprise" visits (and they do) and request an on-the-spot audit and bacterial swab testing to ensure we are conforming to our required safe handling practices and organic standards. We are required to carry out up to 6 bacterial swabs from 6 different locations eg. benches, knives, equipment to ensure no bad bacteria is present. Finally, we are not allowed to use any cleaning products that are not approved by the ACO. If any of these procedures are found to be non-compliant, we lose our accreditation and production stops until it is corrected to their processing standard, to date this has never happened to us.
We are very passionate about what we do, and we make sure we do it properly, we are not interested in cutting corners it is just not the type of people we are.
I say all the time, we are here to make a serious difference in the pet food industry and in the health of our little (and big) loved ones. We are not interested in just making a pet food that just keeps our pets alive, we want them to literally thrive. To us, we are wasting our time otherwise and just not interested in doing that, life is way too short.
