How We Make Affables' Snacks (And What's In 'Em)

We know you love your fur babies! We love our two cats, Ophelia and Persephone, and our precocious puggle-mix, Affables. Our efforts to feed them the best quality, bio-appropriate foods has led us on an interesting journey into pet nutrition and the pet food industry, culminating in making our own scientifically researched raw pet food.

Persephone, Affables (Affie) and Ophelia.

Seeing how many of our friends and family had pets with chronic conditions and allergies, we knew we had to share our findings so pet owners can learn more about pet nutrition and embark on their own journeys towards healthy happy pets. We’ll share more of what we learn on this blog, examining myths and science about pet food from both the industrial and holistic sides of the debate. But for now, an easy place to start is to share with you how we make our nutritious dehydrated beef crackers so you can understand what goes into every beefy bite.

Affie has energy to burn and is the mascot of our business.

 Where’s the beef?

Remember that Wendy’s commercial from the 80s with the grouchy elderly lady upset with her burger? Maybe she was right to be demanding when it came to her beef. Many consumers are concerned about animals raised in the agri-food industry, including the quality of life for the constrained animals, the quality of the protein and the impacts on the environment. What we eat has huge implications for the planet, and what we feed our pets is part of this equation.

Industrial feedlot raised beef raises many issues from environmental to ethical.

After researching this area, we feel the best outcome for our health and the environment is to consume the bulk of our protein from local animals raised humanely as part of an eco-appropriate food system. Simply put, this means choosing animals eating what they’re biologically designed to eat how they’re designed to eat it. For beef, this means allowing cattle to forage for the most nutritious grasses over a large area.

Beef produced with the simple ingredients of grass, water, and time has unparalleled flavour and quality. We manage our carefully selected herd and our land closely because we know that lush grass, fertile soil, and clean water combine with happy, healthy cattle to give rich taste and tenderness to our beef. (Trail’s End Beef, Nanton)

We’ve carried this value forward into our pet treats, sourcing our beef and bison from grass-fed, grass-finished animals pastured on Alberta grasslands. The family farmers who supply our beef take longer to raise their animals than feedlot cattle (delaying their profits) and must maintain the integrity of their rangelands to support grazing. Although under threat from cultivation for crops and climate change, grasslands ecosystems are an important natural environment, sequestering carbon in their deep roots and providing critical habitat for many species. Grassland systems require periodic grazing to stay healthy; with the bison gone, cattle can fill that role in appropriate areas.

Intermittent grazing helps maintain the biological integrity of grasslands by replicating the historic effect of grazing by bison.

Beyond being healthier and happier than feedlot animals, grass-fed, grass-finished beef and bison are also better for you and your pet. No second-rate protein for pooch here! When cattle eat bio-appropriate food, their gut health is in balance reducing the need for interventions such as anti-biotics. Grass-fed, grass-finished beef and bison is also leaner in harmful fats yet richer in beneficial fats and nutrients. Most reputable nutritionists consider 100% grass-fed cattle nutritionally superior to grain-fed beef. You can read more about the impressive benefits of grass-fed, grass-finished beef from one of our farmers, Top Grass Cattle Co., on their website.

Grass fed beef is more than just tasty, it is a healthy way to eat. Our animals are raised without hormones, antibiotics, animal by products or grain and are raised on free range pastures without herbicides or pesticides. (Top Grass Cattle Co. Drumheller.)

Grass-fed pastured cattle on eco-appropriate rangeland.

 Where’s the filler?

You might be surprised to read our meat cracker ingredients: beef or bison. Yup, no corn gluten meal, brewers yeast, soybean flour or chicken by-products. Debate rages over the nutritional benefits of the ingredients in commercial pet foods. We won’t get into that debate now, but our journey has led us to reduce the amount of processed food we eat and that we feed our pets, including lowering the burden of ‘extras’ that come with processed food such as preservatives, salt and sugar. The protein in our crackers is high quality beef or bison made from the heart, liver and kidney of these animals.

We don’t use any filler ingredients such as cereal by-products or any ingredients sprayed with pesticides or herbicides.

Secret’s in the sauce

Our recipe is simple and straightforward. In fact, anyone can make their own healthy 100% grass-fed beef or bison pet treats at home. We encourage you to do so with the caveat that you buy grass-fed, grass-finished beef or pastured bison from local farmers, not industrial beef at the supermarket. The only way to guarantee quality is to meet your farmer, and supporting farmers raising eco-appropriate beef shifts the market away from the harmful effects of industrial beef.

After much experimentation, we’ve settled on the perfect mix of beefy parts for our crackers. To boost the nutritional profile of every cracker, we add beef organs such as liver or kidney to our raw muscle meat mix. To safely dehydrate and store the crackers, we balance the nutrient-rich but ‘wet’ organs with lean muscle tissue from trimmed beef hearts. This keeps the fat to a bare minimum, reducing the risk of fats going rancid over time. Our sweet spot is a mixture of about 70% lean muscle tissue from beef hearts and 30% organ tissue from the livers and/or kidneys. We obtain these human-grade beef organs whole and trim and process them by hand, which means we confirm the healthy quality of the animals in every tray loaded into our small dehydrator.

Nurient rich organs from pastured free range cattle.

One reason why pet food is full of preservatives is to protect the fats and oils in the kibble – taking your pet food out of the laminated bag and storing it in a plastic container can reduce the storage life of that kibble and leave rancid fat residue on the inside of the plastic bin. Rancid fats are oxidized fats which are linked to an increase risk of inflammation and disease. 

To keep our crackers fresh without the use of preservatives, we pop an oxygen absorber in each re-sealable bag. Keeping the bag stored in a cool, dry place and sealing after opening keeps the crackers fresh and safe to feed for six months or more.

Cooked vs lightly dried

Since we make all our crackers by hand in small batches, we have ‘eyes on’ quality control every step of the way. Even after dehydrating, the crackers are snapped into smaller pieces by hand ensuring even and full drying of every tray of meat. We then weigh and bag the crackers into food-grade plastic bags.

We feel it’s important to dry the beef crackers only as far as needed to kill harmful bacteria while retaining as much of the vitamins and minerals as possible. Commercial pet food companies use large processing facilities to create their crackers. To avoid spoilage, meat is either cooked at high temperatures, leaching heat-sensitive vitamins and minerals like vitamin B and C. Or meat is dehydrated so intensely that only a chalky, protein husk remains – again at the cost of heat-sensitive vitamins and minerals. 

We dry our meat crackers at the lowest safe setting (155F/68C on our dehydrator dial) to make human-grade beef jerky. But first, we ‘shock’ the crackers in our kitchen oven by heating them to 160F/71C to kill harmful bacteria like E. coli or salmonella that could be present. (The USDA has a good article on safely dehydrating jerky for human consumption.) This is the best compromise between retaining the quality of the protein and ensuring a safe cracker for your pet. That’s also why our meat crackers look like…well, dried beef and not chalk.

Proof’s in the pudding

In the end, only one test remains… does your pet love our treat??? We hope they do, and we hope you feel good about feeding filler-free, high-quality food to your fur baby, joining the community of pet owners who vote with their dollars for eco-appropriate agriculture and family businesses.

Take the Affables’ Snack Challenge - we guarantee your pet will love the treats!