When Jacqueline Prehogan and her husband started searching out healthier, more sustainable meat alternatives for themselves, they decided they wanted to do the same thing for their pets. So they launched Toronto-based Open Farm. Now, the company is a market leader in sustainability. Prehogan explains how they got there:
My husband, Isaac, and I started to make the connection between the way ingredients were raised and grown, and the nutrition of what we were eating. We wanted to know where our food was coming from. We had two pugs at that time, and we wanted to do the same for them—they’re part of the family. So, we started to look for pet food that was humanely raised and sustainably sourced. It really didn’t exist. So, we decided to create it ourselves.
When we started, our supply chain didn’t exist. We had to go knock on doors and explain why we were different, and why it would be good to work with us. The result is that we built this incredible proprietary supply chain.Now, we have three really big goals. The first is our zero-waste-to-landfill goal. Pet food is responsible for 30% of the environmental impact of meat. It’s massive. And the packaging waste is pretty much all going to landfill.
And finally, in 2020 we committed to reducing our carbon emissions by 42% by 2030. That’s a huge task, because we need to reduce our emissions from our 2020 baseline when we’re growing by more than 80% every year. It’s going to be about electrifying our manufacturing operations, essentially.