To stay ahead of the competition and grow your business, you need to arm yourself with knowledge and key contacts. There’s no better way to increase both than by attending Petfood Forum 2011 and Petfood Workshop: Safety First.

The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, recently passed by the US Congress, will require that food producers—including petfood processors—create written, risk-based hazard control programs. HACCP, or hazard analysis and critical control points, is a widely accepted method employed within many food safety management systems. 

Polymer science, the study of the glass and melt transitions of polymers, has been developed and used by the synthetic polymer industry for many years. In recent years the principles of polymer science have been applied to the petfood extrusion process to better understand and predict processing effects.

The US Food and Drug Administration has told our industry that it is the manufacturers' responsibility to produce Salmonella-free food. “Food safety was at the forefront of product design,” Galen Rokey, process technology manager of Wenger said about the company's latest upgraded extrusion equipment. “There are a number of trends, which are currently impacting the petfood industry, that affected the design process behind each of these new innovations. 

Petfood processors have become increasingly aware of the need to control Salmonella during production due to the risk of associated pet and human illness. Processors know how problematic this pathogen can be but may not fully understand the scientific dynamics surrounding effective elimination and potential for recontamination during processing based on heat resistance and persistence in low-moisture products such as petfood.

With money tight and financial controllers questioning product input costs, arguably there has never been a better time to review recipe costs. What scope is there to reduce costs in wet petfood?