How Wellness Natural Canned Pet Food Is Made
We think it’s important for you to be informed about our manufacturing process in order for you to learn how our high-quality meats, grains, fruits and veggies are transformed into the yummy finished wet recipes that you serve your pets. In preparation for the manufacturing process, we work with only the most respectable ingredient suppliers and regularly test each of our raw materials to ensure that we are always making our foods with safe, delicious ingredients. The manufacturing process for our canned pet food is the same procedure used for most canned pet foods, but natural ingredients behave a little differently during production, and as a result, there may be some differences in the appearance of our canned products based on a few variables. We’ll walk you through the process.
Step-by-Step Process:
- Depending on the recipe, our meat can start fresh or frozen. This meat is placed in a grinder, and then is inspected to ensure that there is no foreign material in the ground meat (which would prevent it from being used).
- The recipe's dry and liquid ingredients are added to the ground meat and then placed in a mixer. The ingredients are mixed to a specified consistency (depending on the recipe), then passed through another inspection point for foreign material.
- Next, the mix will be canned. The empty cans pass under a jet of air to remove any possible foreign material. Filling equipment dispenses the mixture into the cans (the final cooking and sterilization process occurs once the product is canned).
- Once the product is dispensed into the cans, the can lids are sealed with partial vacuum.
- The sealed cans are washed to remove any residue. The cans are then inspected to ensure correct fill and vacuum levels.
- The cans are coded and loaded into a retorting machine. In the retorting machine, the product is cooked and sterilized with the use of steam.
- The sealed cans are cooled in water and dried. The cans are then labeled, cased, placed on pallets, and shrink wrapped. They are now ready to be distributed!
- A sampling of finished cans is pulled from each run to be reviewed and analyzed by our Quality Assurance team. We also place some cans in incubation for ten days. Product is released for distribution only after the samples pass both a sensory panel and processing records review.
Finished Product
Hopefully this gives you more insight into the process of how we manufacture our natural canned recipes. Our stringent Quality Control procedures ensure the purity and palatability of our wet food. Like all natural foods and materials, there may be some differences in the look and texture of our finished products. As detailed in the step-by-step process, these variations could be a result of the slight natural raw material fluctuations, processing variables and formula differences (because grain free recipes bind differently than those with grains). We could add artificial gels and thickeners to make sure the appearance of every can and every recipe is identical, but we're committed to making the best quality products that are free from these artificial ingredients.