In a recent webinar series, Paul Hughes, an executive with petfood manufacturer Nestle Purina PetCare, discussed the importance of the US Department of Agriculture in the petfood industry, amid concerns over budget cuts for the department. Hughes provided an analogy relating the importance of an umpire in the game of baseball to the importance of USDA in providing information to the commodity market, on such things as petfood ingredients.

The global corn harvest may set another record this year, with a 9% increase in yield over the 2011 crop, itself a record, according to Dr. Joseph Glauber, chief economist at the US Department of Agriculture. The rise in the global crop is being driven by an almost 20% increase in the US harvest, he said.

Dr. Gary Lynch, PhD, senior project coordinator of technical sales for Roquetter America Inc. explains the benefits—including the crop's sustainability—of the yellow pea in his Petfood Forum presentation, Ingredients From the Yellow Pea: Pet Food Applications.  

Researchers in New Zealand are calling for petfood companies to stop exporting eel to the United States to be used as a novel protein source in petfoods. One local petfood company, Addiction Foods, exports a range of gourmet petfoods to the US and other markets, marketing them as hypoallergenic or "earth-friendly."

Online registration is now open for China's first petfood conference, Petfood Forum China 2012, which will be held October 12 in Shanghai, co-located with Pet Fair Asia. Taking place at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, Petfood Forum China offers pet industry professionals with the latest on pet nutrition, petfood ingredients, processing and packaging technologies, and new product development processes from leading petfood consultants, manufacturers, suppliers and academicians.

The American Feed Industry Association’s Liquid Feed Committee will host the 42nd annual Liquid Feed Symposium, September 12-14, at the Grand Hyatt Denver in Colorado, USA. The program educates and promotes the agricultural liquid supplement industry, with speaker presentations, research funding, achievement recognition and the Liquid Feed Symposium Trade Show.

Although dietary omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids have been extensively studied in poultry, they have not yet been prospectively investigated in psittacines despite potential benefits for preventing and treating atherosclerosis, osteoarthritis and other chronic disease processes. This study investigated the incorporation of dietary n-3 fatty acids into red blood cells (RBC) and determined the effects of supplementation of psittacine diets with fish or flax oil on plasma lipids and lipoproteins in the cockatiel.