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Current Issues in Small Animal Nutrition : Overview of Pet Food Manufacturing

Claudia Kirk

Pet Food Manufacturing runs the gamut from complex to simple. Regulations vary by locality and state with the larger oversight provided by USDA and the FDA CMV (See Dr. Smart's section).

Manufactures may be small "garage operations" whereby an individual or small group has small batch production and markets locally in Pet Specialty Stores, Pet Bakeries or on the Internet. These small operators generally avoid any regulation or oversight as long as they do not sell across state lines. A business license is all that is needed. However, the label on the product is a legal document and must meet minimum standards suggested by AAFCO (discussed elsewhere). Because of the number of small niche products, there is very little scrutiny of small operator labels or products unless there is a consumer complaint.

These small specialty foods companies typically do not have the same level of quality control and ongoing monitoring as the Large Global Pet Food Manufacturers (eg. Hill's, Mar's, Nestle-Purina, Iam's). Within small specialty food manufacturers, there is a wide spectrum of quality and nutrition. In general, many of these small operations are making treats and snacks. Because treats and snacks do not need to be nutritionally complete and balanced, they should make up < 10% of the pets total caloric intake. Thus, the nutritional balance is not much of an issue unless it is marketed as a complete and balanced food. The focus on private treat products is often flavor and general safety (free of toxins and microbial contamination, etc.). A good example here would be a small start-up company as you might imagine the early days of Three Dog Bakery. Large companies are very complex and typically have detailed quality control. There are some simple questions to ask when evaluating a new food.

If using a complete and balanced food, it is important to ask several questions:

1) Who is manufacturing the product?
Is it a small company, a co-manufacturer, or the company plant of a global company?

Q1. What is a co-manufacturer?

  1. A company that takes a manufactured product and rebags it.
  2. A company that makes a food or product on contract
  3. A company that rents its plant to another company for its manufacturing use.
  4. B and C
A co-manufacturer or co-packer is a company like Menu Foods or Merrick's. They will make products on contract for both small and large companies as well as private labels like Wal-Mart and the like. Small companies typically rely entirely on a co-manufacturer to help them with the formula (or even provide the formula recipe), use the co-packers ingredients, and use any co-packer quality control. A large company may use a co-packer because they need a special piece of equipment (like that needed to make chunks and gravy in pouches), they need extra capacity, or they are making smaller test batches and don't need to occupy their full scale production plant while they tweak the formula and production process to optimize the product. Large companies that use co-packers generally use their own ingredients, food scientist and engineers, and quality control process. In other words they control the process and more or less "rent" time on the co-packers equipment.

2) Who formulated the product?
Was it a nutritionist, a food scientist, or a pet owner with no formal training? For small "back yard" producers, they often have come up with their own formula that will be modified as needed to be commercially produced. Private label brands are generally produced by food scientist and sometime nutritionist employed by the co-packer. Small niche companies (eg. holistic, organic, human grade) often hire or contract a nutritionist or food scientist to formulate a recipe according to their nutrition concepts. The Large global companies come in with their own formulas that have been formulated by a team nutritionist, food scientist, and sometimes veterinary specialist.

3) What is the level of quality control?
I routinely get requests to evaluate a product/recipe from pet owners or enthusiast who want to start their own pet food company. There intentions are excellent and they want to be able to make the best product they can and claim the product is complete/balanced/nutritious. Unfortunately, quality control and animal testing is expensive. Once these smaller groups hear the cost of testing, many elect to just make the product because they "know" it will be good. Responsible individuals go for the testing and start small. While in California (sorry folks) I had at least two incidences where animal deaths were related to imbalanced diets created by "backyard" producers.

4) What are the costs of nutritional testing?
Proximate analysis: In order to sell a product with a legal label, a proximate analysis must be done. It is from this testing that the minimums and maximums on the label are established. A proximate analysis tests for moisture, crude protein, crude fat, ash and crude fiber. Carbohydrates are determined by subtracting all the nutrients and determining difference. The cost is about $250-350 per analysis. Ideally, you would want every batch tested. Small producers may test the formula just once. Major manufactures use NIR (near infrared spectroscopy) to provide ongoing testing within the production line as a food is being made. This assures the product being made will meet the stringent specifications of the manufacturers.

Full analysis: Once the food is made, larger manufacturers will perform a full analysis of the food. A full analysis tests for all of the nutrients described by the AAFCO. This will evaluate the amino acid content, fatty acid content, vitamin and mineral analysis along with the proximate analysis data. In order to state a diet is complete and balanced by analysis (what you see on the label nutritional statement), a full analysis must be performed and the results must meet or exceed the minimal level established by AAFCO for the specific life stage that the product is intended. The cost of a full analysis is about $2500 to $3500. A large manufacturer will typically have 3 full analyses run on 3 different batches to determine the level of nutrient variation in their food. The same is done on all ingredients that will be purchased for a food (more on this later)

Feeding trial: An animal feeding trial is very costly. Testing a food to assure it meets the nutritional needs of a certain life stage is done using a specific AAFCO testing protocol. To assure adequate animal performance and health, animals are feed the diet exclusively for a period of time. Weight (or growth), food intake, and key blood parameters are monitored for the period of time dictated by the type of test. Only if the animals pass the test with a healthy outcome can the pet food label state the food is complete and balanced.

A Growth test (8 animals for10 weeks) is about $5000, a maintenance test (8 animals for 6 months) is about $6,000 to $10,000.

Palatability trial: This is a short-term test that evaluates the willingness of animals to eat the diet. This generally runs $1,000-3,500 depending on the protocol. It can be a monadic trial (single diet) where it is determined that the animals have sufficient intake to maintain health and meet energy needs. Or, it can be a comparison trial, where diet A is compared to diet B. These tests are typically run by the large global companies and used for marketing claims. These tests are typically run over 1-7 days. This was the test that alerted the FDA there was a problem at Menu. Iam's was evaluating palatability in its food co-packed by Menu and had acute illness and death in cats from this test panel. There is no requirement to do a palatability test on any food.

Ingredient testing:
Ingredient testing varies by product. Most all ingredients have been tested by the supplier for a proximate analysis, some have full nutritional analysis. In addition most will come with a heavy metal analysis, microbial analysis, antibiotic residue, pesticides and herbicide contamination and mycotoxin screen. The manufacturer may repeat all of these tests or just those that are a likely risk. For example nearly all plants test for mycotoxins in grains. These test are anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to more than a $1000/test. Small companies often rely on the supplier's certificate of analysis (statement of testing results and guarantee of safety). Large global companies perform ongoing testing of some or all of these tests before the ingredient is accepted into the plant.

Q.2 Then why was melamine and cyanuric acid not detected?

  1. Quality control was poor resulting in inadequate testing
  2. These ingredient were added to grains because they test as nitrogen and crude protein
  3. The testing procedures didn't work
  4. he certificate of analysis stated there was zero level cyanuric acid and melamine
A. When testing for protein, generally nitrogen is measured. NIR, combustion, microkjeldahl, or kjeldahl methods are used to identify nitrogen and a standard formula is used to extrapolate to protein. This is why the label says "crude protein" because it is an estimation of protein based on the nitrogen content. So any nitrogen rich compound can falsely elevate the crude protein content. This can be accounted for by evaluating the amount of non-protein nitrogen (NPN) to help measure true protein (generally a dye binding method). It is not normally performed in small animal feeds but more often in ruminant feeds where NPN can be used by cows.

5) What is the level of knowledge of the company?
This is a big issue for me. Before I recommend a product, I call the company; ask for the full nutritional profile (full analysis) and the calorie content. If a company can't give me this information very quickly - I worry they don't really know what they are doing or the product is not well tested. This also means a contact phone number must be on the bag. I find this one of the most telling tests of how well a company knows its product.

6) Finally, I look at the ingredient label.
Suffice it to say, ingredient quality is a huge topic with lots of controversy. Many of the claims and criticisms of specific ingredients are marketing hype. But from a pet food safety standpoint, evaluating the company's quality control (not always easy to do) is a better measure than reading a label. Digestibility and ash content data provides an indication of quality. Especially with protein, high digestibility and low ash is equated to higher quality more so than the product description (meat by-product vs a meat meal).

There is no definition for organic in pet foods. The term natural is quasi defined. Human grade does not guarantee quality.

Q3. The wheat and rice protein concentrate put into Menu foods was pet food quality.

  1. True
  2. False
The answer is False. The contaminated product was labeled for human use. Nothing more needs to be said here.

Why Chinese ingredients?
"Certainly we grow enough wheat in the US to not have to buy food globally." "Weren't the pet food companies just after cheap ingredients at the risk of our pets?" Sadly, the US is now a NET food importer. We have all come to rely on the low cost labor in other countries in order to purchase economical foods and process food ingredients. The lack of standardized regulations and oversight in certain countries represent the key factors associated with identifying food contamination.

So what are the typical quality control steps taken by pet food manufacturer brining a product to market? The example I use is for a Global Pet Food Manufacturer. Mid-sized and smaller companies may do all, some or none of the following steps.

Initial product evaluation:

  1. Formula evaluation - formula development estimation of nutrient content based on computer formulation programs. Product nutrient targets are set. Limits are placed on what level of nutrient variation is acceptable.

  2. Ingredient evaluation - confirmation of nutritional quality and safety as described above. Generally samples from at least 3 separate batches are evaluated. The ingredient variability will determine if the supply is suitable.

  3. Supplier evaluation - Is the supplier reputable? What is the history of the supplier with the company? Can the supplier promise to meet the annual needs of the company? (The later is very important if you want to be sure to keep your product on the market and not be forced to find a new supplier quickly - think kangaroo and oats!)

  4. Process safety - the processing specification (temperature, duration, penetration) of the extrusion and canning process are evaluated for safety and impact on the nutrients (eg. starch cook, protein damage, oxidation). Each state requires a specific certification for canning (thermal processing or F factor) especially with an eye toward botulism prevention.

  5. Finished product testing -
    1. Analysis of the food (nutrient content and aesthetics)
    2. AAFCO animal feeding trials
    3. digestibility trials
    4. palatability trials
    5. other (i.e. urine pH testing, etc.)

  6. Shelf-life testing - placed under various shipping and storage conditions in environmental chambers to establish shelf-life.

  7. Packaging testing - Test the effect of different packaging on storage, taste and ability to protect the product until it is available for consumption.

  8. Production testing - The formula is now taken to the commercial production plant and testing is repeated to make assure the finished product matches the results of the initial test production criteria.

  9. Ingredient screening - bulk ingredients are tested in an in-plant lab before being released into the storage bins. The certificate of analysis is checked against in-house tests.

  10. Line testing - product is tested throughout the manufacturing process for temperature, quality, and nutrient content.

  11. End product testing - Samples of the final end product are tested at timed intervals. This is typically a nutrient test.

  12. Finished product sample storage. Samples of the finished product are stored for future testing if there is a concern about a product once in the market.

  13. Now the product is packaged and shipped to suppliers.


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