With a career in food manufacturing, our founder Matt is incredibly qualified to find the top human-grade production facilities across the globe. He has taken the same approach in finding the top production partners to produce Shelter Helpers treats for your pets. In fact, the facilities where we source our raw materials are USDA inspected, human-grade, 3rd party-certified manufacturers of beef.
Having worked in the industry for many years, we lean on our expert partners to ensure the highest level of quality for all our products and processes. We have visited the facilities and toured the ranches where the cattle are raised. Our pets are important, and we want the best for them. As people, we care about the food we put into our bodies because of the impact it has on our health. We believe the same should be true for our pets.
Our cattle are grass-fed, raised on open pasture and are free to roam their entire lives. While we source products from across the globe, everywhere we source from must meet our incredibly high standards. Sometimes, this means we source from outside of the US where grass-fed beef is more widely available.
Why does your label state another country as the country of origin?
Since only 3% of cattle raised in the US are grass-fed, and grass-fed beef is one of our most important claims, we sometimes need to source beef from outside of the US. This means going to countries where grass-fed beef is more common, such as Brazil, Uruguay, Australia, and even the US when we can find beef that meets our standards. You may see different countries listed on our label depending on where we sourced the beef for that particular production run.
Why don’t you buy your beef from the US?
We do when we can! We only purchase beef that meets our high standards of grass-fed, pasture-raised, and free from antibiotics and hormones. If we can source these claims at scale in the US, we do, even if we need to pay more.
Why is it important to use human grade facilities for your beef?
Food safety is important for human consumption, and our pets as well! We want to ensure that what we feed our pets meets the same human-grade standards when sourcing our beef.