Keith Schaefer was hugely instrumental in our product development.  He was a key person in developing the largely popular Technical brand of dog food.  Keith’s philosophy was always “keep it simple”.  Whenever we use complicated ingredients, access products from other countries and generally formulate diets to fit what the marketing team wants, we lose sight of what is most important for the animal.  He convinced me that ingredients like corn, wheat, chicken and pork meals were excellent ingredients.   Equally important was that they could all be accessed locally. To this day, I am continually in discussion with nutrition experts and industry professionals and they all agree that these ingredients are outstanding.  We are committed to keeping the products simple without ever compromising nutrition.  

As part of the simplicity, The Great Canadian and the Legacy Valuing Tradition lines carry minimal preservatives other than what is in the vitamins and what is needed to stabilize the fat.   There are companies now asking for preservatives to maintain pet foods for 18 months.  We think this is ridiculous.  We want dogs and cats to get the freshest products possible.  As part of this, we ship products from our plant within days of manufacturing directly to retailers.  There is no substitute for fresh food that contains no preservatives, artificial flavors or coloring.  Our goal is outstanding nutrition, “no bells or whistles”, no ingredient manipulation, minimal preservatives, fresh product, and equally important is our approach to give excellent value.  We believe that fancy ingredients do little than raise the price for the customer and the producer. This even shows up in our packaging.  We use one simplified style of bag for all of our Great Canadian products with colour coded stickers.

We access most of our ingredients locally, thanks to my son, Mark.  One of his most important responsibilities is controlling the movement of ingredients.  This is no simple task.  99.6% of all ingredients in our top selling pet foods come from 100 km of our production facility.  

Today, we produce three distinct pet food lines as well as many private label products.  By working closely with leading professionals in this industry from formulation, manufacturing and quality control, we continually create products we are proud of. 

Understanding our approach to feeding your pet is vitally important to us. Dogs have always been a big part of our lives… from my St. Bernards, Sebastian and Brandy when growing up, to Theo, Max, and Queen, all German Shepherds that we patiently parented over the last 30 years. (Queen is our shepherd on the bottom of the page here).