Why Sustainability Matters

Sustainability Throughout our Supply Chain

Most of our customers are passionate about helping the environment, and so are we. How does our food, and the way we produce it, help the environment? We are passionate about our beautiful planet, and all that lives on it. Because our food is dehydrated with air, it does not need to be frozen after production, in transport or when with the customer. This has huge energy savings at each stage of the foods journey. It also makes it much more convenient and cost effective for the owner to store at home., It can be treated like any dry food, just kept away from heat, damp and light sources, and just adding fresh warm water (from the kettle not the hot tap!) before feeding to give the perfect water levels for health.

Our food has a 1-year shelf life, so managing to produce a food that is still raw, fresh, highly nutritional and 100% no artificial ingredients or preservatives, in such an environmentally friendly way, is something we are really proud of.

Supply Chain Quality

However good quality the ingredients are, controlling what happens to those ingredients at every stage of processing is key to a high-quality final product. We spend a lot of time sourcing the best quality raw ingredients. To ensure they stay this way, controlling the production and processing is critical to final product quality. To get the best food we can deliver to the clients and the dogs, we have to have control and quality checks on every stage of the production – sourcing, transportation, processing, packaging, storage and of course the manufacturing process. Luckily our process is very straightforward, but we control every stage to ensure nothing goes wrong. That way you can relax and enjoy!

We check every certification, and we test the food before, during and after manufacturing to ensure the dogs are getting the cleanest and best food that we can deliver. We even test for glyphosate!

Testing

How do we ensure the food is safe, and also nutritionally balanced? The nutritional balance is easy – we don’t cook, overheat or extrude any of the ingredients, so we keep all the nutrients inside. This means, unlike many other companies, we then don’t have to add synthetics to make up for what has been lost during processing. We also exceed the nutrient requirements of the base FEDIAF guidelines require.

Our vets and biologist make sure that every ingredient is chosen carefully, for its nutritional input and species appropriateness. Sometimes, we add things like coconut fibres, as a great low carbohydrate fibre source, as the safest replacement for what would be found in a preys gut. However hard we try; we can never match nature in its raw form! In practice, most dogs have no opportunity to wild hunt for their food, so we are happy that we provide the next best alternative.

For the safety, we buy the best quality raw ingredients. This means that we know that the raw products going in are as high quality and safe as possible. Because our manufacturing processes are so gentle, we then make sure we do as little as possible to alter them, so that you dog gets them in as natural a state as possible.

As we said above, we test our ingredients before manufacturing, and our final products after. We also undertake tests such as water activity monitoring, during the gentle drying process. We are proud to be, as far as we know, the only dog food company that tests our recipes for glyphosate!

Packaging & The Environment

Food packaging needs to maintain the integrity of the food, by protecting it from the outside environment, whilst being as environmentally sound as possible. Many ‘compostable’ packaging materials are made from Genetically Modified (GM) materials (which must not be used to package organic food). In addition, much packaging marked as ‘compostable’ is actually only ‘commercially compostable’. This is not good, as there are not many commercially compostable units in the UK, and if this is put in with a normal recycling waste it can contaminate the whole load, yet is not suitable to be composted in the garden. Most people are unaware of this. Rocketo therefore have a zero plastic commitment from the 1st quarter 2021 and are constantly looking at ways to reduce our environmental footprint.