Passionate About Wholesome Nutrition
What our furry friends eat is, the cornerstone of health and wellness. That's why many of our staff members have taken advanced nutritional studies through the College of Integrative Veterinary Therapies. Its also why we passionately source the very, very best options in every type of food for your pets (and ours!)
We love offering loads of options - customized recipes and a range of dry, canned, raw, and even freeze-dried, wholesome foods for your fur kids. As a raw-positive clinic, our vets and staff support balanced and wholesome raw feeding with in-depth knowledge and support for pet parents.
If you pop into our whole foods shop, our clinic staff are happy to answer basic raw feeding questions and make recommendations, including where to start, how to transition to raw food, and what supplements we recommend adding. If you have more questions or a specific health concern you hope to support with food; you can book a nutritional consultation with our nutritional guru, Registered Veterinary Technician Ashley, to learn what options are best for your fur kid's specific needs.
3 Essential Food Tips
From big box stores to the grocery store, you'll see pet foods everywhere. In fact, over $4.1 billion of pet food (and treats) are sold in Canada each year, with $1 billion in exports. It's a big business, but not all options are equal! If it's raw food, kibble (dry crunchies) or canned - here are our three essential food tips for healthy pet food:
Nutritionally Balanced
Did you know there are no regulatory pet health requirements for pet foods on Canadian shelves? And that the words "natural" and "healthy" are unregulated terms on pet food labels? Yikes! (Don't believe us - read the labelling guidelines yourself.)
This is why choosing North American-made foods that voluntarily meet third-party nutritional standards is incredibly important. If you see the acronyms "AAFCO," "NRC," or "FEDIAF," it means the food company has formulated their foods to meet the guidelines, and their foods are complete and balanced for your pet's life stage and condition. Our European brand, Farmina, meets the EU regulations (it's an Italian-based company), which are much more strict and actually regulatory. Of course, every food in our shop meets one or more of the standards above.
Ingredient Sourcing
While many pets will eat almost anything (especially dogs!), we want to ensure their food's ingredients are high-quality and well-sourced. Phrases such as "human-grade" tell you the proteins are from quality sources. We avoid products with "meal" (rendered meats) and "by-products" on the label - you wouldn't want to eat rendered food or non-meat animal products - so why would you feed them to your fur kids? Each product we carry is carefully scrutinized for ingredients, and we are happy to navigate nutritional labels with you.
Health & Safety
It's also important to ensure the facility where the food is made is clean and meets safety standards. A HACCP-certified facility has taken steps to address food safety and remove the risk of biological, chemical, and physical hazards by analyzing production processes. We also look for foods that have been subjected to batch testing, which means that they routinely test their foods for pathogens such as listeria and salmonella. Again, of course, all foods we carry follow these practices.
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