USDA Certified & Audited

Why Is USDA Certified Important?

Not all pet food manufacturers are required to be USDA inspected. While USDA certification is completely voluntary, Totally Raw Co believes that daily USDA inspection plays a critical role in ensuring product quality and food safety. Our parent company, Far West Meats, is a human food manufacturer and already operates under strict USDA-regulated processes and procedures. These same standards are applied to our pet food manufacturing operations. As a result, all raw materials are sourced exclusively from USDA-approved vendors and are supported by letters of guarantee that verify the quality and integrity of our ingredients.

WHAT BEING USDA CERTIFIED MEANS

USDA Certified means that the United States Department of Agriculture is present during the production of Totally Raw Co products. A USDA inspector oversees the process by verifying ingredient quality and expiration dates, confirming proper equipment sanitation, and ensuring employees follow approved food handling and sanitation guidelines.

What is a Third party audit?

Third-party audits are used to verify your plant's compliance with current regulations and industry practices through program reviews and on-site observations. These audits, including HACCP, Distribution Centers (DC), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Food Safety Management Systems, Pet Food/Animal Feed, Packaging and Dietary Supplements, employ a combination of food safety principles, regulatory guidelines and industry best practices to provide an objective overview of your program. Evaluations and audits and inspections are conducted by specially trained, experienced auditors with extensive knowledge of the food industry and specific training in each sector.

Food Safety

We take the safety and quality of our raw pet food seriously. Our products are produced in a USDA-inspected facility, ensuring that we adhere to the highest standards of food safety. This facility follows stringent safety and sanitation measures, as well as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), to guarantee that every batch of our pet food is safe for your beloved companions.

Kill Step

To further enhance the safety of our products, we incorporate the use of bacteriophages specifically designed to target and eliminate harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. This innovative approach is used on all our frozen pet food meals. The phages are sprayed on our products during the mixing part of our production to ensure proper disbursement throughout the batch, prior to packaging.

Bacteriophaging

Bacteriophaging has no impact on organoleptic properties, including taste, color, texture, or consistency. It is an FDA-approved intervention commonly used in the human food industry for pathogen control in products such as fruit, deli meat, seafood and dairy products. The process selectively reduces pathogenic bacteria while leaving beneficial microflora intact, preserving the raw nutritional profile of the meat.

Thank you for trusting us with your pet's nutrition.

USDA Certified & Audited

Silliker Good Manufacturing Practicing and food safety systems audit.