When you think of federal agencies, what comes to mind? For me, I think of an intimidating, hulking building with slow, red-tape processes. I recently learned the reality is far from my wild imagination. Boiled down, federal agencies, and specifically the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in this story, is comprised of people, looking to give back to their country.

“If we don’t find overseas markets for our products, many farmers, many producers, go out of business.”

That was the message Daniel Whitley, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, told the American Feed Industry Association’s Board leadership at a recent meeting. Our global policy team would strongly agree - the future of American agriculture, and the U.S. animal food industry, will be contingent on demand from beyond U.S. borders.

The American Feed Industry Association’s Mallory Gaines and Gary Huddleston recently brought staff from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service on a tour of the Kent Nutrition feed mill in Hagerstown, Md., as part of the AFIA’s Feed 101 Program.

Last week, the American Feed Industry Association’s Board of Directors participated in a “fireside chat” with senior Food and Drug Administration officials about challenges facing the regulatory agency and steps it’s taking to work with stakeholders to solve problems and prepare for future innovation.

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.

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.

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.

The year 2015 offered few notable fashion, news or entertainment headlines, unless the unfortunate bumbling “Left Shark” of the Super Bowl halftime show counts as all three. But in the world of pet food, 2015 was a big year. It was the year the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) started to “review and consider potential changes to modernize pet food labeling…,” and now, after nearly eight years of hard work, the label changes are on the brink of roll-out.