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The year was 1909. In a Chicago meeting room, owners of businesses growing an animal food industry discussed the increasing body of regulations governing the sector at both the federal and state levels. They understood the need to coordinate and stay informed of how these regulations were developing and formed an organization, which today is the American Feed Industry Association. Simultaneously, state agencies realized that together, they could develop standards, definitions and policies for the enforcement of feed laws that promoted uniformity. Thus, they created the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO).

The two organizations have been working together ever since.

Last year, I wrote about the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) Veterinary Services Form 16-4 (VS 16-4) and how if it was not updated, it could hinder exports for animal-based products in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak on U.S. soil. We recently celebrated APHIS’s progress on updating this form, and are now turning our attention to going country-by-country, product-by-product to remove any diseases not relevant to those products.

It is a joint effort between regulators, industry and stakeholders to do our jobs and achieve the goal of providing safe and nutritious animal food products that help feed the world. It was refreshing to see this reflected by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) at its recent midyear meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Are you aware that formaldehyde is an important feed additive for reducing virus risks, which the Environmental Protection Agency is currently trying to ban? First, let me explain why formaldehyde is in animal food and then I will discuss how the EPA’s current regulations may impact its safe use in animal food manufacturing in the future.

The National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) combustible dust standards have been around for a long time. If you have been tasked with managing a manufacturing facility in the animal food industry, you have probably heard of them, but may be confused with how they could apply to your facility.

Today, the American Feed Industry Association’s Leah Wilkinson participated in a virtual public meeting on the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine's (CVM) role in the Association of American Feed Control Officials’ (AAFCO) feed ingredient definition process. This issue is of importance to the animal food industry as the AFIA strongly believes that AAFCO and CVM should continue to work together to ascertain the safety of our animal food products.

If you or your customers export animal-based feed or pet food, you know how heavily the industry relies on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). In many cases, you can’t export a feed or pet food without some form of APHIS health certificate or approval. In recent years, getting the documentation needed to export has been more than a headache due to ongoing agency staffing and funding issues, the pandemic and the ongoing highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) crisis.

Wow, we’re already in week two of the new year, and I am still getting used to writing “2023.” Before we completely wrap up 2022, I wanted to briefly share an interesting development that happened just prior to everyone putting up their out of office messages for the holidays. In late December, the American Feed Industry Association submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), asking the agency to expand the expertise and use of the feed management standard in current government conservation programs.