Who we are and why we exist.

We are an industry association specifically created to bring Accountability, Transparency and Integrity to the Fresh Cooked Pet Food market across Canada, the United States and beyond! We started this work in 2015 as we were launching the fresh food and gently-cooked pet food market segment in Canada. Our mission is to have a positive impact in the adoption of strict industry regulation in the pet food industry.

As pet food is an unregulated industry in Canada, pet owners have effectively no assurances of what is in the pet food they are buying. Whether it is healthy or safe for their family pets, or whether it poses a serious health hazard to other family members in the home. Kristin Matthews and Peter Zakarow are the founders of Canadian leading fresh cooked pet meals company Tom&Sawyer (www.tomandsawyer.com), and developed their company by self-imposing stringent human food regulations. They created the Fresh Cooked Pet Food Alliance (FCPFA) to:

• Bring awareness to governments and consumers of the need for pet food products to follow safety and compliance rules. Instead of creating new rules, we suggest applying existing human food production rules to all pet food products. That would significantly increase the level of safety and quality of products while also reducing the opportunities for pet food brands to be deceptive about their product quality.

• Simplify adherence through clear FCPFA Standards that can be adopted by pet food companies, to provide consumers with trust in the quality of the food they are purchasing. Over the past 8 years we have seen a positive shift in the market with the establishment of rules including the new AAFCO definition of “Human Grade” and a shift for some government inspected human food facilities to move into high quality pet food manufacturing.

• Promote industry growth for fresh cooked pet food companies who join the FCPFA to demonstrate their commitment to trusted FCPFA Standards, with Canada positioned as the fresh cooked pet food innovation hub globally. Oversee ongoing compliance of member companies and provide a transparent endorsement of member pet food brands through earning the “FCPFA Seal of Approval,” with the intention of promoting consumer confidence, brand trust, and healthy food quality standards.

• Work with other pet industry stakeholders (pet retail, distribution, veterinarian etc.) to invest in research and promote a safe, healthy fresh cooked pet food market segment that is driven to directly improve the lives of our pets, and raise the bar of quality for all pet food market segments.

• Educate consumers about the potentially unhealthy and deceptive practices used by non-FCPFA member companies.

We are all about transparency and ensuring that pet parents are equipped to make the best decisions for the health of their pets while balancing their budget expectations. Tom&Sawyer is unfortunately still the only company in Canada making pet food completely to human food safety standards, which means that from ingredient sourcing, quality, handling, cooking, packaging, and storage, we make high quality pet food that humans can eat.

As one brand we can’t realistically be in every market, so we started the FCPFA to have other companies raise their standards so we can all collectively improve pet health and lower the shocking rise in major pet medical conditions and their associated veterinary costs.

Bring transparency to pet food marketing.

• When we first launched in 2015, a Canadian pet food brand used a “doctor” in a lab coat for all of their ads, making everyone think they were a veterinarian, only for us to find out they were actually a retired chiropractor being deceptive.

• In Canada, multiple “vet rated” review websites are owned by a small deceptive pet food brand that always ranks itself as #1 in the fake veterinarian reviews.

• Brands that focuses on “humanely raised - traceable” ingredients to divert focus away from what parts of the animals are used in their foods (distract with a social issue instead of standing behind acceptable ingredients).

• HEAVILY processed and low quality foods, which likely most undermine pet health, are sold by many Vets because of a reliance on payments made by those companies and nutrition training being sponsored by these three large kibble brands at vet schools.

• High quality raw meat from the grocery store is full of bacteria and needs to be cooked to be safe, yet people do not question the safety of unregulated raw meats for their pets and the heath hazards that introduces into their homes.

The gold standard in safety for fresh prepared foods for your pet.

We love our pets, and as members of our family they deserve food that is safe, healthy and tasty! Unfortunately the pet food world hasn't traditionally focused on any of these outcomes. In fact, without regulation and through deceptive marketing practices, most pet owners never know exactly what is in the food they are buying, whether it is safe and healthy, or how and where it was made.

Even modern pet parents who are investing time into reading labels and attempting to improve their pet's nutrition and overall health are set up to make sub-optimal choices for their pets, because of common industry practices like re-defining all ingredient term definitions to mean something different in pet food than they do in the human food world.

It is not in the best interest of most pet food companies to change current industry practices, as it would add tremendous cost and require them to completely overhaul their current practices in making pet food. However, it is absolutely in the best health interests of our family pets who are increasingly suffering from serious health issues like cancer, diabetes, allergies, pancreatitis, kidney failure, and high rates of obesity. Sound familiar? Our pets are now experiencing the same health epidemic humans have suffered from highly refined commercial foods, except while doctors do not sell terribly refined and unhealthy food to their patients, many veterinarians do.

Pet health issues are becoming an increasingly expensive reality for families, and we want a more level playing field so consumers get truthful information about pet food products and can properly compare products and make the best decisions for their budget. While it is hard to fight the strong well-funded lobbying efforts of large pet food companies in talking to government, we have decided to start our own movement for consumers. In launching Tom&Sawyer, we created a robust framework for making higher quality pet food and being completely transparent and honest about every aspect of the process.

We want other companies to increase their commitment to pet health and their families by adopting our FCPFA Standards, and in turn we want consumers to have complete trust in these pet food brands. When you see that FCPFA Seal of Approval, you can have trust and confidence that pet food brand makes a high quality product that is healthy and safe for your family pet.

FCPFA Standards.

The FCPFA makes it very easy for consumers to make the most informed, trusted decisions for their pet's nutrition. We take away the confusion and industry deception on labels by clearly denoting our own "Seal of Approval" on FCPFA members packaging, denoting that the manufacturer of that brand follows all strict FCPFA Standards:

1) Must DIRECTLY OVERSEE and audit the manufacturing of their food products using strict human food standards and official facility inspections.

To be a member of the FCPFA the pet food company must actually be directly accountable for the development and manufacturing of their products. Over the past 8 years more high quality human food facilities are entering the pet food manufacturing space which dramatically increases the quality and safety of pet food products. We support pet food brands leveraging the existing capital investments and human food regulations compliance of these high quality manufacturing partners for their products, as long as these products are made in full compliance to human food regulations required of those facilities.

These facilities must leverage human food standards including the FDA Food Traceability rule (or country equivalent), and regular facility inspection structures in existence in that country. In Canada we see HACCP compliance through programs like SQF (Safe Quality Food Program) through the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and require inspections by government bodies including the Canada Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) or provincial equivalents. This includes certification that all ingredients used are fully human edible (and not left the proper handling and storage process), including any supplements/vitamins/minerals not be “feed-grade”.

Many pet food brands are just marketing companies who outsource food to a number of unregulated facilities and don’t have direct control over ingredients, food safety, nutrition compliance, regular lab testing, and immediate control over production. The emergence of new human food facilities reduces these risks.

2) Must be focused on improving pet health through products and clear on “complete and balanced” ADHERENCE.

Over the past 8 years we have seen many new certified “pet nutritionists” enter the market after taking a basic online weekend course. They are inexpensive resources used by many pet food brands to bring a sense of science and legitimacy to their products, but unfortunately mostly lack the knowledge required to create “Complete and Balanced” recipes. We require that member organizations regularly lab test finished batches of final product to prove Complete and Balanced nutritional compliance for every product.

We also want our member organizations to focus on improving pet health through their products. In the past many pet food brands have focused on using poor quality ingredients and testing to ensure they would not harm pets. We want member organizations that as a whole focus on making pets healthier.

3) ethical Marketing and labeling practices

It’s unfortunate that the pet food industry has traditionally been less than open in explaining its products to their customers. Over the past several years that has been changing and groups like AAFCO defining a process of compliance to use the “Human Grade” marketing term is a step in the right direction, although it only applies in the US. There is still a lot of room for deception in other countries, including in Canada where we see brands using Human Grade without following any of the strict AAFCO rules, and also leverage facilities that have CFIA-approval for pet food export (which has existed for decades and is a very low bar) instead of CFIA-inspection for human food quality compliance. Even the buyers at large national retailers are usually confused as to what level of compliance their retail brands actually have.

Our members must employ strict human food labeling and marketing practices that are transparent and honest about the ingredients and products they are selling.