Food Safety Is Our Top Priority

Written by Cassandra Curtis — Mom of 3, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Once Upon a Farm

Like every mom, I want to make sure my children are always safe—especially when it comes to what they are putting on and in their bodies. And as a company made up of moms and dads, food safety is our top priority.

Safe and Nutrient-Dense Cold-Pressed Blends from Farm-to-Fridge

Every step from farm-to-family is carefully monitored to ensure safe and nutrient-dense blends end up in your fridge. From sourcing ingredients to cleaning and blending, to filling and cold-pressing, to shipping from our kitchen to yours, our team is dedicated to delivering safe, delicious, and nutrient-dense blends your little ones will love. 

We have high standards and we push to make those standards higher each and every day. You can count on us for clean, safe, and high-quality food and snacks for your babies, toddlers, and big kids.

What We’re Doing

• Organic ingredients: We work with only certified organic farmers to source high quality, USDA Certified Organic ingredients. 

• Cold-pressing: We use a technology called HPP (high-pressure processing) which uses pressure (5.52x the deepest part of the ocean!) instead of heat to kill any bad bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella, but retain the nutrients, taste, and texture of ingredients. Learn more about our process here.

• Testing: We require ingredient testing from our suppliers and perform tests on finished products to ensure they are safe. We test for human pathogens (bacteria that cause disease), and we test for spoilage organisms, such as mold and yeast.

• Cleaning equipment: Our production facilities follow strict sanitation procedures to ensure that our products are produced in a safe manner. 

• Shipping: We pack our blends with ice packs to keep them cold and use expedited shipping methods to get them to your doorstep as quickly as possible. When shipping product from our facilities to different retailers, we use refrigerated trucks to keep the blends cold during transportation to make sure that you are getting fresh, high-quality items.

What You Can Do

• Storing blends: Keep them cold in the fridge or freezer. If properly refrigerated, our blends can be consumed right up until the Enjoy By date that’s located on the back of the packaging. If your little one decides they only want some, you can re-refrigerate the rest for up to 72 hours. If you plan to freeze them, place them in the freezer before the Enjoy By date. Just be sure to eat them within 24 hours of thawing (we don’t recommend re-freezing blends after they’ve been frozen and thawed).

• Keeping blends cold: Our blends can be left out of the fridge for up to four hours (longer if taken on-the-go in a cooler bag with an ice pack or when frozen and thawed). A good rule of thumb: if the pouch is cool to the touch, it’s safe to eat!

• Online deliveries: If ordering from our website or Amazon, blends should be cool to the touch and ice packs should still be cold when you open the box. If the ice packs have melted and the pouches are room temperature, please contact us and we’ll send a replacement shipment. Remember to put them in the fridge as soon as you open the box to keep them cold!

• If you notice the pouch is swollen or bloated, here's what to do: The pouches you receive should not be bloated. If your pouch appears bloated and/or presents poor taste or texture, we recommend throwing it out and contacting us so we can make it right.

• If your delivery was left outside for longer than expected, here's what to do: Check that the ice packs are still cold. If so, pop your blends in the fridge to keep them cool! If not, contact us.

Third Party Validation:

Not only do we do our own lab testing to ensure our ingredients, packaging, and finished products are safe, but we partner with the Clean Label Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health and transparency in consumer product labeling. They use state of the art laboratory testing in an accredited analytical laboratory to test for harmful environmental and industrial contaminants and toxins. Some of the contaminants they test for include: Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Mercury, Antibiotics, BPA/BPS, Pesticides, mycotoxins, and residual solvents.

We submitted products to The Clean Label Project and received a Best in Class Certification with a 5/5 score for overall rating, product purity, product value, heavy metals, process contaminants, and byproduct contaminants. This means that compared to other baby food brands tested, our products are clean and low in industrial and environmental contaminants. 

We're grateful to provide a product that we feel confident giving to our most cherished treasures, our children. As a mom of three, I give our products to my girls daily and I feel good doing it. My hope is that we can give you the same peace of mind.  

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us at care@uponafarm.com.