Pet Factory
Beefhide dog chews made from American-raised cattle in Mundelein, Illinois
🇺🇸 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Pet Factory products are made
Pet Factory describes itself as one of the few remaining manufacturers in the United States that actually uses USA-raised cattle hides. In rawhide, sourcing the hide domestically is the expensive decision and the one almost everyone else stopped making.
The 100% USA Beefhide “Blue Bag” range is stated as made in the Mundelein facility. The company separately sells globally sourced beefhide, toys and accessories, and does not blur the two. That fence is what makes the domestic claim usable.
The company runs an “It’s” programme — Inspected, Tested, Safe — with scan tags that give per-product testing transparency, which it describes as an industry first. Independent testing puts its beefhide at 99.2% digestible.
The Mundelein, Illinois location, the 1989 founding date and the 100% USA Beefhide claim are all published by Pet Factory on its own site, as is its 2022 move into the PetWise family of brands. Because the catalogue also includes an explicitly globally sourced beefhide range plus imported toys and accessories, the emblem reads American Manufacturing. Never read this profile as saying every Pet Factory product is US-made — the claim belongs to the Blue Bag line.
The story
Pet Factory was founded in 1989 by two Midwestern dog lovers making beefhide chews by hand in a small facility in Mundelein, Illinois. It stayed privately owned by the same team for more than three decades.
The business it built is unglamorous and increasingly rare: taking hides from American-raised cattle and turning them into knotted bones, rolls, braided sticks and chips. Almost all of that work left the country years ago.
What kept the operation defensible was leaning into the safety question rather than away from it. Pet Factory became the first company in the pet industry to earn GFSI certification, and it publishes per-product testing through a scan tag it calls the “It’s” programme — Inspected, Tested, Safe.
In 2022 the company joined the PetWise family of brands. The Mundelein plant, and the 200-plus people who work in it, stayed where they were.
Why they matter
Rawhide is a category where imported product has repeatedly gone wrong, and where the buyer can see nothing about the process. A chew made from American cattle in an Illinois plant is one of the few ways to close that gap.
The company is also honest in a way the category rarely is. It sells both domestic and globally sourced beefhide and says so, which means the blue bag actually means something rather than functioning as decoration.
And the 200-plus jobs Pet Factory supports in Mundelein are a reminder that this is real manufacturing employment attached to a $4 dog chew — the kind of work that disappears quietly and never comes back.
Shop Pet Factory products
Browse Pet Factory beefhide chews stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Are Pet Factory chews made in the USA?
Pet Factory’s 100% USA Beefhide “Blue Bag” line is stated as made in the USA at the company’s Mundelein, Illinois facility. Pet Factory also sells a globally sourced beefhide range plus toys and accessories, which are not US-made.
Where does Pet Factory get its hides?
From American-raised cattle. The company describes itself as one of the few remaining manufacturers in the United States actually using USA-raised cattle hides.
Where is Pet Factory located?
Mundelein, Illinois, just outside Chicago, where it employs more than 200 people from the local community.
Who owns Pet Factory?
Founded in 1989 and privately owned by the same team for over three decades, Pet Factory joined the PetWise family of brands in 2022.