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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.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with the new executive director of the Assocation of American Feed Control Officials, Austin Therrell, on his plans for the industry.

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.

Remember the opening scene from the iconic television series, Star Trek? You know the one, where the Starship Enterprise glides by as the narrator exclaims that her intrepid crew will “boldly go where no man has gone before!” What the average viewer might not know is that the fictional craft USS Enterprise’s inaugural voyage started in 2245 and by the time her third pilot, the illustrious James T. Kirk, manned her helm in 2264, she had been engaged in interplanetary exploration for 19 years. Almost as long as the American Feed Industry Association has been urging the Food and Drug Administration to modernize its approach to the use of marketing claims for innovative animal food additives with proven efficacy and safety!

All of food and agriculture, including the U.S. animal food industry, waited with bated breath this week to see if the rail companies and their labor unions would achieve a labor agreement before the Friday deadline. I’m sure we all breathed out a collective sigh of relief when we heard the good news that the parties reached a tentative agreement late last night. Now, we wait to see if the unions will ratify this agreement, which is anticipated. 

This week, the American Feed Industry Association’s President and CEO Constance Cullman penned an op-ed in The Hill on the Food and Drug Administration’s “archaic” policy for reviewing environmentally beneficial animal feed and feed ingredients, which has put U.S. farmers at a competitive disadvantage globally. She said it is time for the agency to develop a solution that allows these products to come to market quickly so that farmers can use them now.

Twice a year, those interested in the animal food regulatory space make the trek to attend the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) meetings. Sometimes those treks require patience while traveling through blizzards in the winter. Sometimes, it requires fortitude to handle being in business clothes instead of in shorts watching a baseball game during the summer. For both meetings, it requires preparation from all parties to make sure the AAFCO business gets due consideration and discussion. Your American Feed Industry Association staff are there on your behalf and are busy preparing for the upcoming AAFCO annual meeting, happening Aug. 3-6 in St. Louis, Mo.