In Canine Caviar Google Hangout #19 learn about the buffalo used in Canine Caviar alkaline based holistic pet food.
Doreen Wong: Welcome to Canine Caviar Google Hangout number 19, today we are answering your questions from Facebook. Today’s question is why Canine Caviar uses buffalo. So welcome Lynn and Jeff, thanks for joining us today.
Jeff Baker: Thank you.
Doreen Wong: The question we received from Facebook, Jeff, is why Canine Caviar uses buffalo.
Jeff Baker: Well, we use Buffalo like we use other proteins, a variety of proteins give your dog a different amino acid profile to help strengthen his or her immune system. We use the treats because they’re lower in fat, lower in sodium and higher in Omega 3 fatty acids, and lower in calories because our dogs in America sometimes have a tendency to need to be on a diet and this way you can give them a lower calorie treat with more benefits.
The Buffalo that we use actually we get from India, and the reason we use Indian buffalo is unfortunately our forefathers in America destroyed all of the North American Bison so there’s just not enough supply to meet the demand of the American consumer. When we realized this, we realized there’s buffalo all over and where did the original species of the buffalo come from, and the Indian buffalo is actually the oldest of the species. Some people will say “oh, well, it’s water buffalo”, well they’re all technically water buffalo, even the North American Bison is a water buffalo, but there’s an Asian Water Buffalo as well that we’re not using, we use the Indian Water Buffalo.
And the reason that we do this is that there’s adequate supply in India and we control the facility, so it allows us to give an American style of processing to a place that sometimes people don’t know much about, that sometimes they have concerns about, the country and the quality, but I will say that the factory is as clean or cleaner than most hospitals into eh United States, so one thing you can say about India is that they regard life in the highest form, so everything is done as humanely as possible. In fact only one buffalo in a room at a time, and the room is completely washed down after that and it’s blessed by a priest so the buffalo is actually halal and kosher, which is an advantage for some of our customers, and it’s a real advantage for the buffalo, because unlike in America when we process something there’s 100 cows or pigs in a line watching the one in front of them get killed, so it’s not so humane, but it’s the reality of life. The nice thing in India is that we can do it more humanely. There’s no such thing as a humane way to do it, but more humanely.
Doreen Wong: And that’s part of the reason why you travel so much, right, Jeff, is you’re also checking in with the different distributors and manufacturers and production facilities to make sure that it’s up to Canine Caviar’s standards.
Jeff Baker: Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, we spend a lot of time in India to make sure that they’re adhering to our policies and our practices and our SOPs, which would be our standard operating procedures. Even though we control the facility, if you’re not there all the time then sometimes people have a tendency to revert back to the way they’ve always done things in the past. So it’s better to be there and on top of them and to make sure that they’re adhering to the way that we prefer to do business for our quality. Since we’ve started importing the buffalo from India there are other people who have imported it from other facilities and the quality is really lacking compared to what we do for sure, because they’re basically a trader and they’re buying from somebody and then they don’t control the facility.
And this is why the buffalo is cheaper than say, beef, because we’re controlling the facility instead of buying it from someone and reselling it so to speak.
Doreen Wong: So there’s no middleman.
Jeff Baker: Exactly.
Doreen Wong: And Canine Caviar tends to use as much of the buffalo if not all of it so that no parts are wasted?
Jeff Baker: We use every single part of it for sure, what we cannot use for making food we use for treats and most of it actually goes for human food from the facility. I know people keep asking when our dry food is going to come out and it was supposed to come out in May but we had some technical issues with the oxidization of the buffalo as it came into the United States so we had to do some different processes on how we preserve the buffalo so that it is not rancid or the fat is not oxidized by the time it arrives. The first container we actually rejected it because it had a PV value higher than we would allow for our customers and our pets to eat and it took awhile for us to figure out what went wrong and how we could fix it. We’ve had all of that fixed and so I think before the end of the year the dry food should be out.
Doreen Wong: That’s one of the things I do appreciate about Canine Caviar, is that you do take that extra step for that quality control, cause I’m sure rejecting an entire container impacted the company financially because that’s product that y you couldn’t put on the shelf.
Jeff Baker: Yeah, that’s correct and it did impact us a little bit. It’s not something that we would use in our factory because we have certain standards that we don’t go above but we were able to shift that to somebody else’s factory. In the end it will be safe for the pet for sure, it’s just not at levels that we like. By the time they recook it and reprocess it for the pet everything will be fine, it wasn’t above a level that would be deemed unhealthy for the pet, it just was above a level that we allow in our facility.
Doreen Wong: Thank you Jeff, again, for joining us. I know that it’s late in Prague where you are so I do appreciate you spending the time with us to have these hangouts.
Jeff Baker: It’s my pleasure, it actually works out better.