Big Wood Dog food factory
Sitepass：Home > Dog food factory > Insider reports of Miyazaki factory
The Bigwood article in "Retriever" What is "natural food"? - Insider reports from a manufacturing facility
"Natural" dog food has recently become popular. However, what is the actual definition of "natural"? How is it produced? The answers are now revealed.
In these days we talk about "natural" dog food, but we don't know much how it is manufactured or how it differs from ordinary dog food. We planned a sneak look at manufacturers to find out the reality and report the facts.
From the very start it turned out that there were only a few manufacturers within the country and even fewer,
hardly any of them make "natural" dog food. Those few manufacturers refused to tell us about the production process.
Obviously it is a "trade secret".
Nevertheless, the more secret it is, the more we want to know. Finally, we called the last one without much expectation.
When the call was answered, I identified myself as an editor of "Retriever". I was losing confidence but snapped out of it, and explained the purpose of the phone call. The response was positive. "We define "natural" dog food as completely non additive food" politely said the owner of Bigwood, Mr. Masaharu Oki. "Preservatives are added to ordinary dog foods in order to improve the shelf life. Accordingly, the food can be stored for a long term. Does that mean, dry dog food can't be stored without preservative? " Mr. Oki continues, "That's right. So we cannot sell out product in a big sack nor mass-produce it. Most processes are done manually."
I reckoned it can't be cost effective. I threw more and more questions but then he told me to come and visit the factory to see the process and answer them all. We have been invited. That is lucky for sure but the idea was to sneakily reveal the secret. We flew to Miyazaki, where the factory is located.
Nothing is more important than the quality and the freshness of the ingredients for food without preservative. For this, carefully selected meat, fish and rice also organic vegetables which are all locally produced are used here. Actually, they are so fresh that even we can eat them. Just imagining it made my mouth water. Such ingredients are delivered into the small factory and workers in white sanitary gowns, carefully working on each process manually.
First excess fat is removed from meat which will then be minced. Next, finely chopped vegetables, herbs, rice, spring water with rich minerals and wood acid (similar effect to black vinegar for humans) are added and kneaded. The mixture is now put through in a tube which has holes at the end so the mixture is evenly divided into potions when pushed from the other end. Then each portion is stretched and cut into pieces. They are put into an oven that just looks like a wardrobe for steaming. It moves to the dehydrating process using far-infrared heating. Each stage flows seamlessly but it is obvious that the workers are very attentive. Thermometers are checked frequently to avoid overheating the food which would destroy natural nutrients and ruin the carefully selected ingredients. This emphasizes it to be "natural" dog food.
Finally the food is taken out from the oven and cooled down naturally then bagged to complete the process.
We knew little about processing natural food. Now we know it can't be mass produced or automated. The reality is that the human hands are involved in most of the processes till the last stage of boxing up.
August 2000, Editor of Retriever (monthly)
