Sometimes it’s the strangest moments in your life that can completely change it for the better. At least that’s what happened to Mauro Trinchini while he was working at his father’s business, Banner Packing in Toronto. He was plant manager in 1988 when a man called looking for bull “pizzles” – jargon in the meat industry meaning bull penises. That’s when his whole life changed.
The man who called on the phone was going to sell the pizzles as dog treats, and Trinchini thought that sounded like a great idea. Not to mention, due to his connections in the meat industry, he had access to all the pizzles, and other animal parts, he needed.
The following year he bought a truck trailer and started a business drying the pizzles on a farm near Tavistock. The company became known as Eurocan Pet Products. Trinchini was the owner and company president. After a couple of temporary moves, the company has now been operating out of their 160,000-square-foot plant in New Hamburg, Canada.
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Eurocan now transforms 80,000 tons of animal parts, including chicken, pork, and beef fragments, into 20 different dog treats that are distributed and sold across the United States and Canada. Their flagship product is now called Bullwrinkles.
Trinchini says that according to market research the average canine gets $600 worth of treats every year. That’s about $50 a month. Everyday three tractor trailer loads of treats leaves the Eurocan facility and about 55% of their production is shipped to the U.S. Retail giants including Walmart, PetSmart, Target, and Pet Valu carry the company’s treats.
The raw ingredients used to make the products are trucked in from slaughterhouses in Ontario and the U.S. Eurocan products are all-natural. They use no additives or preservatives. The company’s plant was even one of the first ones to achieve a sought-after ranking from the Safe Quality Food Institute, an international standards agency that inspects plants, supply chains, and products to ensure cleanliness, traceability, and transparency.
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When raw products arrive at the plant they are weighed and given a lot number. This way when the finished products are packaged and shipped out they can be traced all the way back to the slaughterhouse they came from.
Eurocan has its own label, Barnsdale Farms, but also wraps some of its products in packages that are provided by large retailers. Bullwirnkles have continued to be their number one seller, even after all these years.
