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At the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), we are committed to expanding opportunities for our members. Gina Tumbarello, Ivy Torres and I manage global affairs for AFIA, overseeing animal food import and export challenges, navigating policies that impact opportunities to trade and implementing market development programs. Our goal is simple: to ensure our members’ ability to thrive, expand and grow by successfully entering new markets abroad, while also maintaining access to the current markets. 

The first week of October was very exciting for the American Feed Industry Association’s global affairs team. Gina Tumbarello, Mallory Gaines and I went to Vietnam to host AFIA’s first in-country program. Our Vietnam programs are made possible by AFIA’s cooperator status with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) and the funding awarded through the FAS’s Market Access Program (MAP).

The American Feed Industry Association’s (AFIA) Board of Directors wrapped up its annual spring meeting in Arlington, Va., late last week, where they heard from federal officials, advocated for key policy priorities impacting the animal food industry on Capitol Hill and conducted other official business, including installing new Board leadership and directors.

U.S. animal nutrition products hold a valuable place in the global marketplace. In 2022, the overall export value for feed, feed ingredients and pet food was $7.5 billion and the total volume of exports of these products was 9 million metric tons.

Not many know what happens behind the scenes here at the American Feed Industry Association. This well-oiled machine may look easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy (as my Pilates instructor says) from the outside, but behind our closed doors, you’ll find dual, sometimes triple, computer monitors; multiple Excel spreadsheets open with trade data and colorful graphs; dozens of browser pages open with research; partially drafted Word documents; scribbled post-it notes; and LOTS and LOTS of caffeine. Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the AFIA, but that’s what it looks like at my desk, and I can tell you, it is all worth it when we score a win for our members and industry.

IFIF, or “If-If” as it is called outside the United States, is not just something you say when you are “iffy” about something. The American Feed Industry Association is not at all iffy about IFIF and its mission. The International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF) provides a unified voice and leadership for the global animal feed industry. Additionally, IFIF represents the global feed community in multilateral forums such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) and the Codex Alimentarius (Codex).  

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.

“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.