This year marked our third year of volunteering staff time at the Arlington Food Assistance Center. In the past, we have bagged rice and oatmeal for local families. This year's task: sorting donated food into crates. While organizing the food items into over 91 crates, we learned a few things about the process. First, they get A LOT of peanut butter and pasta, but oddly enough, not a lot of jelly and pasta sauce to accompany. And second, many items are opened or expired, and therefore, cannot be used.
Impress your friends and family this Thanksgiving with some fun facts about turkeys and turkey feed!
Earlier this fall, on a whim, I signed my daughter and I up for riding lessons, something neither of us have done before. My lovely colleague equestrians regularly tout its benefits for young girls, and I thought it could be a great opportunity to spend more quality time with her, while learning more about horse care and feeding, something that could help me in my job (win-win!). Given this newfound interest, I recently joined the association’s equine committee to learn about why byproducts are used in equine feed.
“Team Trade” (aka Gina Tumbarello and myself) do several different jobs at once for American Feed Industry Association members. Most important is answering members’ questions and helping solve their day-to-day trade snags. But another important aspect of our work is opening market access to help interested AFIA members gain more market share in a country of interest by providing a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges that exist in that market.
Let’s have a party! How about a whole Conference of the Parties (COP)?! COP, which has been gathering for 30 years, is where the formal negotiations within the United Nations (U.N.) on Climate Change take place. COP27, being held this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, is where I am at representing the American Feed Industry Association. Let me explain the details of this meeting and why it’s important for U.S. agriculture to participate.
This week, the Institute for Feed Education and Research (IFEEDER) made headlines for the research work we support at the Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Center at the University of California-Davis. Despite detractors’ efforts to discredit research underway, we are proud of the work we do with public institutions, such as the CLEAR Center. We can’t address food security while reducing our environmental impact independently. We must engage.
This week is a very important week. On Tuesday, the nation votes in the midterm election. On Friday, we give thanks to our nation’s veterans who served to protect the freedom and liberties we sometimes take for granted. (It is also my daughter’s birthday, so we will celebrate her and the joy she brings to our family.)
On Tuesday, the American Feed Industry Association’s Louise Calderwood participated in a listening session at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine on the regulation of animal foods with certain claims. This issue is one the AFIA has been following for quite some time (see related blog posts here and here), given its hindrance to getting products to the marketplace that would help the U.S. get one step closer to meeting its food security and climate goals.
Anyone with a lazy cat or dog will know what I’m talking about. You come home from work, tired after a long day, and your pet has been snoozing all day. “What a rough life,” you might say. Or, “Where’s the rent? Get a job!” All in good humor, of course. In fairness, a lot of animals have jobs and serve important purposes (although, they still may not cover the rent or treats).
As we previously reported, the American Feed Industry Association has been working to promote U.S. feed additives in the Chinese market. Over the past few months, with the use of funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Market Access Program (MAP), the AFIA has been working with a communications/media firm in China to distribute informational articles on ag-media websites and social media platforms.