U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar visited a pet food manufacturing plant Wednesday, and heard how global problems affect a small company south of Brainerd.

Sarah and Tom Barrett, siblings and co-directors of Barrett Petfood Innovations, met with Klobuchar and discussed national issues that impact their business—everything from farm subsidies to Obamacare to U.S. trade relations with the Far East.

Klobuchar is taking advantage of the Senate's spring recess to go on a 10-county tour of Minnesota. The plant she visited manufactures pet food for a variety of brands, exports across the world, and employs nearly 50 people locally. The Barrett plant, about 20 miles south of Brainerd, makes everything from dog food to monkey food to treats for bearded dragons.

The smell of pet food was pungent even outside the building, and the factory itself had deafening noise. Those on the tour were given white coats to wear so the smell didn't transfer to their clothing. However, the facility's offices featured several objectively adorable labrador retrievers, so there was still a clear sense of what the heat, noise, and smells were all for.

Klobuchar was a good sport through all of the walkthrough—dodging forklifts that zoomed around, sticking her hand in a shovelful of dogfood, and querying the Barretts on what problems they needed help with.

One of the main topics they broached covered the Barretts' move to try and expand to manufacture pet food for the Taiwanese market, which has taken four years and counting. The difficulty is that Taiwan requires its inspectors to travel to the plant itself, thousands of miles from the small island near China. It also requires Barrett Petfood to send a thick stack of documentation about the food to Taiwan—every ingredient used, in the Mandarin language. Sarah Barrett explained they needed to hire translators to keep up.

The Barretts should try to get help from the U.S. Commercial Service, Klobuchar said. The agency is the trade promotion division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Her office could help bring the two together, she said.

"We're going to try and help you on the Taiwan front," Klobuchar said.

Barrett asked Klobuchar about the status of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal between North American (including the U.S.) and Asian nations. One of Donald Trump's first acts as president was an executive action to withdraw from the agreement.

Klobuchar said it was uncertain what would become of the agreement now.

The siblings also talked about their worries about health insurance. Under the Affordable Care Act, they'll face an uncertain insurance cost environment if they exceed a threshold of 50 workers and are classified as a large company, they said. The company provides an outstanding health insurance plan to its workers, Tom Barrett said.

"We don't want to penalize our employees because of a law, basically, that we now have to change our healthcare," he said.

Klobuchar was receptive to their plight.

"The key would be to either change that threshold ... or it would be to try and ease some of the requirements," she said.

Her next scheduled stop Wednesday was discussing broadband infrastructure in Wadena.