Our Guarantee...
Feed your pet with confidence, each and every meal! At Redbarn quality is #1. We have strict control specifications in our factories to ensure the freshest product goes out our doors every day for your dog to enjoy.

Redbarn Pet Products was started by two friends who believed that there was a better alternative to feeding your dog dry food. They felt that the natural proteins found in fresh meat were important to a dog's health and well-being and set out to develop a food that was meat based, preserved naturally and convenient to use. The result was the Redbarn Premium Food for Dogs in the roll format.

With the aid of food nutritionists, the food was perfected and now includes Beef, Chicken & Liver and Wheat free Lamb & Rice flavors.

With the success of the food under their belt, the next step was to complete the line by adding an assortment of premium quality treats. The result is a full selection of natural body parts and a range of exciting and unique treats.

The Redbarn team has since grown to include food scientists who work solely at developing new wholesome products for your dog to enjoy!

Date: August 14, 2007

To: All Sales Staff
From: Dave Andersen
Technical Director, Redbarn Pet Products
Re: Redbarn Quality Assurance Procedures

I have been asked to bring all of our sales staff up-to-date in terms of the steps we take at Redbarn to be certain we are putting out safe, wholesome and high quality products. From the very beginning, the owners of Redbarn have made a commitment to quality and I am proud of the program we have in place to be certain that the Redbarn factory produces the highest quality products.

I am outlining below a summary of our overall quality assurance program along with some of the specific details of the testing we do before a Redbarn product leaves our facility. Feel free to share this information with any of our customers and if I can provide more details with regard to any specific product or testing protocol please contact me.

REDBARN PET PRODUCTS QUALITY ASSURANCE PROCEDURES

STAFFING

As Technical Director of Redbarn Pet Products, I am responsible for overseeing all of the quality control aspects of our facilities and outside co-packers of Redbarn products. I have undergraduate and advanced degrees in food science and have worked for over 40 years in the pet food industry including 10 years with two of the largest manufacturers. Our quality assurance manager Mayra Olivera is also a degreed professional with over 20 years of experience. She came to Redbarn after being the quality assurance manager of a food manufacturing facility with over 1000 employees. We currently have 3 full-time technicians in our quality assurance laboratory who execute the hour to hour testing protocols that are in place for all items in our product line.

FACILITY

Redbarn Pet Products maintains a fully equipped quality assurance lab as well as a product development lab and pilot plant facility for trial batches of items in our product line. In addition we utilize an outside FDA licensed microbiological laboratory that picks up samples each day for testing. Our in-house lab is set-up to test pH, moisture levels, water activity levels and salt levels as well as perform microbiological tests for standard plate counts, salmonella, coliform and aflatoxin testing.

REDBARN PET PRODUCTS OPERATES UNDER A FULL H.A.C.C.P. PROGRAM

The Redbarn Pet Products manufacturing facilities operate under a fully certified HACCP plan specifically designed for pet treats. It consists of an assessment of hazards, determination of critical control points, and procedures to monitor these critical control points. In addition, Redbarn has a detailed product recall plan that is tested with a “mock recall” on a yearly basis.

The Redbarn HACCP plan is based upon the principles and guidelines contained in the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) “Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point System”. The Redbarn HACCP system complies with the requirements of 21 CFR 123 and equivalent programs.

SELF-MANUFACTURED TREATS

All of the Redbarn formulated treats (those containing more than one ingredient) are self-manufactured in our Long Beach , CA facilities. All of our ingredients are bought from major suppliers and are sampled and inspected by our quality assurance staff prior to being released to production. A C of A (Certificate of Analysis) is required from all suppliers for each lot of material shipped to the Redbarn facilities. All animal body-part components are bought from suppliers who produce product that meets our detailed specifications for guaranteed analysis and microbiological standards.

A production record is kept of each lot produced which includes the quantities manufactured, the lot number of each raw material component and the analytical data determined by our quality assurance technicians. Moist products such as our filled bones and rawhides, rolls, deli-sticks and burgers are not packaged until the quality assurance department completes the determination of the product water-activity which is a measure of the osmotic pressure of the filling showing that it will not support bacterial growth. Our laboratory has the top of the line instrument for making this important determination.

All products that are preserved because of dehydration such as meaty bones, pig ears and bully sticks are not released for packaging until the quality assurance technicians have determined that the moisture content is below the point at which it can support bacterial growth. Again, the Redbarn laboratory has a top of the line moisture analyzer that gives us rapid and accurate determinations of moisture in our products.

CO-PACKED TREATS

Although the majority of the Redbarn product line is self-manufactured in our own facilities, a portion of the commodity style items such as pig ears, cattle bones, hooves and some of our bully sticks are manufactured at partner suppliers. In these cases, Redbarn has established a written product specification for each item including microbiological specifications for standard plate counts, coliform and salmonella organisms. Each lot of incoming material is tested by our quality assurance staff prior to being released for packaging. No Redbarn products are shipped to customers without passing thru the Redbarn facility and being sampled by our quality assurance staff.

In addition, we have instituted a procedure where our technical staff performs in-plant inspections at all of our key suppliers to be certain the facilities are processing our components in a manner established by the specification. These plant visits now include all off-shore facilities manufacturing finished product for Redbarn Pet Products.

LOT CODING

Each individual Redbarn package has a 5, 6, 7 or 8 digit code number signifying the date it was packaged at our facility and where pertinent, the specific lot number of that days production. The Redbarn quality assurance staff maintains the daily production records and quality reports that match each of those specific lot codes. In addition, our warehousing operation tracks the lot number of each item that is shipped to each account. This provides us with traceability to pinpoint the location of any problem lots.

In addition to the lot coding, a retained sample is held for two years of each lot of product packaged or shipped from Redbarn.

COMPLAINT INQUIRIES

The Redbarn customer service staff keeps detailed records of each complaint call received about one of our treats. When a complaint is logged for a product, the retained sample of that lot number is pulled from our quality assurance storage. The product is examined for appearance in our in-house laboratory and then sent to an outside FDA certified laboratory for what is known as a full “public health” screening. This is a test for both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, coliforms, salmonella and coagulase positive staphylococci. To date, we have never had a recall.

MELAMINE ISSUES

Redbarn's technical staff has closely monitored the recent recalls of pet products that were traced to the incorporation of melamine in wheat gluten sourced from China . Only a small quantity of wheat gluten is used at Redbarn primarily in our Deli Thins treats. Our gluten has always been sourced domestically or from Europe . We have tested retained samples of Deli Thins from the past two years and all batches have been negative for melamine. We have also tested all wheat gluten lots that have been received at Redbarn since November 2006 and all batches have yielded melamine results of “none detected”. We now require our supplier of wheat gluten to provide a melamine test for each lot number shipped to Redbarn.

SALMONELLA ISSUES

Redbarn maintains a comprehensive and vigilant program to be certain product containing salmonella is not shipped from our facility. Although salmonella usually will not result in a sick dog, it can cause sickness which can be serious in infants and the elderly. For this reason, FDA and state inspection agencies tend to concentrate a major portion of their resources in detection of salmonella contamination.

Salmonella is relatively easy to kill with heat pasteurization and all Redbarn products are processed at a temperature well above the point where salmonella is killed. All of our plant workers are uniformed, gloved and hair netted to prevent contamination at the packaging step. All of our product contact surfaces are sanitized prior to the start of the production day; again during the midday lunch break; and a third time during the daily cleanup cycle.

As you can see from the above information, the quality of our products is very important to all of us at Redbarn. We go to a lot of effort and expense to be certain that our factory ships product that is not only unique, long lasting and highly palatable but also is healthy and safe from a quality assurance standpoint. If we can clarify any issues or answer any questions with regard to the quality of Redbarn foods and treats feel free to me, Dave Andersen, Technical Director, or either of the owners of Redbarn, Mr. Howard Bloxam or Mr. Jeff Baikie.