Our Story….

Redbarn Pet Products was started by two friends who believed 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.

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 for your dog to enjoy.

Our Quality Assurance Procedures

At Redbarn, we take the necessary steps 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 have developed programs to ensure that the Redbarn factory produces the highest quality and safest products possible.

Contamination. How Do We Prevent it?

Our manufacturing plants, at home and abroad, are a reflection of our company.

Although Redbarn Chicken Jerky items are manufactured in a Chinese plant, it is visited and inspected annually by the owners of Redbarn. We go to a lot of effort to assure ourselves of the quality of the product coming from this plant. Our Chicken Jerky is processed in a plant in China that has been inspected and approved by the F.D.A and Redbarn has invested in testing protocol that must be met prior to the shipping of any product.

We demand accountability.

Redbarn has a company policy of not buying any “offshore” ingredients or finished products through third party brokers or trading companies. We buy only from the manufacturer thus enabling us to control the quality of the product produced.

We perform strict quality control procedures.

Redbarn personnel perform an H.A.C.C.P (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) inspection of all our offshore suppliers. In addition to the supplier’s quality control procedures, each lot is now analyzed by the Chinese government laboratories and sampled by the U.S. FDA upon arrival in Los Angeles.

Staffing

Our Technical Director is responsible for overseeing all of the quality control aspects of our facilities. He has undergraduate and advanced degrees in food science and has worked over 40 years in the pet food industry including 10 years with two of the largest manufacturers.

Our Quality Assurance Manager 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 a 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 a well as perform microbiological tests for standard plate counts, salmonella, coliform and aflatoxin testing.

Redbarn Pet Products Operates Under a Full HACCP 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.

Manufactured Treats

Redbarn’s 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 Certificate of Analysis is required from all suppliers for each lot of material shipped to the Redbarn facilities.

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 Rawhide, 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 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.

Lot Coding

Each individual Redbarn package displays a “Best By” date listed as Month/Day/Year followed by a one or two digit code used internally to track raw materials for that product.

Complaint Inquiries

The Redbarn customer service staff keeps 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 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.

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 contact Dave Andersen, Technical Director, or either of the owners of Redbarn, Mr. Howard Bloxam or Mr. Jeff Baikie.