A new Canadian pet food company is striving to tackle the food waste crisis and raise the bar on sustainability with its innovative business model.
Early in November, Mississauga, Ont.-based Dane Creek Capital Corp. announced the creation of Dockside Pet Products and Services Inc., a Nova Scotia-based company that aims to deliver high quality dog and cat food using rescued fresh food and sustainable ingredients.
Working directly with farmers and fisheries, Dockside will use fresh seafood, vegetables, and fruits that don’t make it to retail market and would otherwise go to waste for cosmetic or other reasons (reasons that don’t negatively impact their nutritional value) in its products. Nearly all ingredients will be locally sourced from Nova Scotia.
Dockside will also be one of the first pet food companies in North America to use crickets in their recipes as a sustainable alternative to traditional proteins. other ingredients featured in the Dockside pet food line will include capelin fish, cauliflower, wild blueberries, and lobster shell.
The ingredients will be purchased directly from farmers, fishermen, and fish processors – but with the unique caveat that they would otherwise have gone to waste. For example, Dockside products will use whole male capelin, which is often wasted because the females are preferred for their roe. Meanwhile, the cauliflower they use will be purchased from the large proportion of each crop deemed “unacceptable” for human consumption because the size or colour of the florets doesn’t meet the retail world’s cosmetic standards. Similarly they’ll be using misshapen or undersized blueberries, and lobster shell as a byproduct of processing fresh caught lobster.
“Sustainability is the key to our future and how we provide for the animals in our homes in part of that,” says Mark Warren, the creator behind Dockside. “Our mission through Dockside is to give pet owners sustainable pet food options without sacrificing quality nutrition and we’re doing that by thinking outside the box with cricket protein and tackling the food waste crisis, specifically targeting fresh food wasted at source.”
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