Hammer milling
The workhorse. Handles the bulk of the catalog and hits standard mesh specs consistently. Where most orders are milled.
The ecosystem
We distribute what our own factory makes.
Gembra Health is the distributor. Flatiron Food Factory, our sister company, is the manufacturer, inspected under USDA or FDA as the program requires. Same ownership, same building, same standards.
Why it matters to you
Most bovine organ powder suppliers are importers and brokers.
A broker can send you a certificate. What a broker cannot do is tell you what happened to the material before it reached them, because they were not there when it happened.
We were. Freeze-drying, milling, and testing all happen at our sister company's inspected facility in Loveland, Colorado, ten minutes from the warehouse your order ships from. A question a broker would forward overseas, we answer in the same call.
- Traceability that does not stop at a broker's paperwork
- Specs held by the people who milled the powder
- Process questions answered by the people who ran the process
- Domestic lead times, not an import schedule
The process
From raw material to a spec you can formulate against.
Human-grade raw material, whichever agency inspects it
Material arrives as human-grade food rather than as pet-downgraded material. Production runs under USDA or FDA inspection depending on the program, and that first decision determines everything downstream: it is made before any processing happens.
Heat treatment at a minimum of 145°F for seven minutes
Raw material is heat treated gently in commercial ovens. It comes out looking almost completely rare. There is no high-pressure step, no chemical bath, and no irradiation.
Freeze-drying
Material is frozen and the water is removed by sublimation. Freeze-drying is the gentlest commercial drying method available, and it is why we use it instead of spray-drying or heat-drying.
Milling to your spec
A hammer mill for most material, a cryogenic mill where a fine mesh or a high-fat material such as heart demands it, with a milling scientist on staff calling which. Density and mesh are set to your formulation, then held batch to batch.
Testing and documentation
Every order ships with a certificate of analysis, lab results, and a specification sheet. The certificate covers microbial, heavy metals, and water activity. Country-of-origin records and allergen statements are available on request, along with whatever else your file needs.
Domestic warehousing and dispatch
Finished material is warehoused in Loveland, Colorado for faster fulfilment to US and Canadian facilities, so lead time is not an ocean crossing.
In-house milling
Two mills, in-house, with a scientist running them.
Most freeze dryers in the country have no milling capability at all. They send dried material out to a separate co-packer who mills it, and that hand-off is where lot-to-lot drift is born.
Cryogenic milling
For very fine mesh, for high-density requirements, and for high-fat material. Heart muscle is usually high in fat and normally requires cryogenic milling to reach a fine mesh at all.
Our sister company
Flatiron Food Factory
The manufacturing side of the operation: freeze-drying, desiccation, milling, tolling, and procurement, under USDA or FDA inspection. If you need manufacturing rather than distributed material, they are who you want.
Three reasons to go to Flatiron directly
- A custom run. Material made to your formulation rather than ordered from the catalog.
- Tolling. You send the material, they freeze-dry it and send it back.
- Co-packing. Packaging runs and the co-packer relationships around them, which Flatiron either runs or manages.
Everything else, buying finished powder by the kilo with a certificate of analysis and a quote, starts here. Orders begin at 10 kg per ingredient.
Buyer questions
Processing questions.
Are organ powders actually nutritious, or does the freeze-drying destroy everything?
Freeze-drying is the gentlest commercial drying method available. Material is frozen and the water is removed by sublimation, so the powder never goes through the heat of spray-drying or dehydration. The step that does the damage in this category is not drying, it is the kill step: high-pressure pasteurization paired with a chemical bath or irradiation. We use neither. Our raw material is heat treated at a minimum of 145°F for seven minutes, then freeze-dried and milled. Every order ships with a certificate of analysis, the lab results behind it, and the specification sheet, so the process is documented rather than asserted. Nutritional analysis is the one piece we assist with rather than supply, because the numbers depend on your finished formulation rather than on the raw lot.
Can you hold a consistent mesh spec batch to batch?
That’s the point of milling in-house. We run both a hammer mill and a cryogenic mill with a milling scientist on staff, so we can hit a specific density and mesh and hold it across lots. High-fat material like heart usually needs cryogenic milling to reach a fine mesh at all. Most freeze dryers in the country have no milling capability and send material out to a separate co-packer, which is where lot-to-lot drift comes from.
What is the difference between your process and high-pressure pasteurization?
HPP is the industry standard kill step, and it rarely runs alone. It is typically paired with a secondary step, usually a chemical bath or irradiation, and it is usually applied to FDA pet-downgraded raw material. We do not use it. Raw material is heat treated in commercial ovens at a minimum of 145°F for seven minutes, and higher where the program calls for it. The material comes out looking almost raw. It is not cooked: it is heat treated to the point that controls pathogens, and then it goes on to freeze-drying and milling.
The powder we bought elsewhere seems fluffy or inconsistent. Why?
Usually because it was high-pressure pasteurized. HPP leaves a powder with an odd, low bulk density that will not fill a capsule the same way twice, and that is what a fluffy or uneven lot on your line normally turns out to be. Inconsistent particle size does the same thing, and so does poor moisture handling, since organ powder is hygroscopic and cakes if it is not dried down or barriered properly. We do not use HPP. We mill in house to a density and mesh you specify and we can hold across lots, and water activity is on the certificate of analysis so the number is measured rather than assumed.
Need a spec held across a production run?
Tell us the mesh and density you formulate to. We’ll confirm feasibility, price, and lead time inside 12 to 24 hours.