Quality and Safety
Creating the highest quality dog food starts with a deep understanding of the current knowledge about dog nutrition and a relentless pursuit of the latest insights and research to inform better decisions. With The Conscious Pet, you can rest assured your best friend is getting the best food on the planet that's also helping the planet!
Most dog foods are made with such poor quality ingredients (including the 4 Ds - meat from animals that are dead, dying, diseased, disabled) they have to cook them at temperatures over 500F multiple times to ensure it's safe to eat. When you source high-quality ingredients, you don't need to process them intensely.
All of the ingredients we source are human-grade. Not just human-grade, but destined for human plates. We source surplus foods from the human food supply, so you know your pup is getting the best food possible with the highest nutrition and highest standards. We get product from diverse areas of the food supply chain - distributors who ordered too much of something for their customers, food makers who always have to trim a portion of their fresh food to make the dish they want, and some who always process food in a way that creates extra. We never source food that's been seasoned or plated in any way or food that's been discarded into the trash.
All our products are shelf-stable with no artificial preservatives and include more bio-available proteins and fats than any kibble. Those high temperatures we mentioned above for cooking kibble also damage fats and proteins making them less bio-available and sometimes not even the same thing as before they were incinerated.
We mix fresh human-grade ingredients, grind and heat them, but never over 175F. When we do this, we kill all pathogens and make the product shelf-stable (pantry-safe), but we keep all the amino acids and fats in-tact and bio-available. What we create is food that is as easy to store and serve as kibble, but as nutritious as raw.
Even with quality ingredients and a refined process, every company making food for our beloved puppers should have a relentless obsession with safety. We have applied our human food manufacturing experience to ensure that every morsel of delicious DoggieBag and other products are always 100% safe, 100% guaranteed.
All of the partners we work with for surplus food help us maintain full quality control and know the end-use is for high-quality dog food. We use the same safety and sanitation protocols from our human-food production days. We also use a local pathogen testing lab and send samples from every batch we make both for pathogens and for nutrition. Every batch is guaranteed.
We welcome any questions about our process and quality. We have lab tests available to share for safety and nutrition. We're happy to discuss any part of the process... except exactly who we work with and exactly what we get from them. Unfortunately, that's guarded by an NDA initiated by our partners. Some partners don't want to share what they waste, how much, and particular ingredients or recipes. We think that's ok, but anything else we can share we're happy to!