Recently the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will begin accepting generally recognized as safe (GRAS) notifications for ingredients for use in animal feed and petfood. Some people in the petfood industry hailed this as a positive step. Why? What does it mean for petfood?

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations to help mitigate the risk of possible transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or "mad cow disease') among cattle in the US have been in place since 1997. These rules do not have much direct impact on the formulation, processing or labeling of petfoods compared to other segments of the animal feed     industry.

In 2001, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a petition broadening the use of irradiation of animal feeds to include petfoods, treats and chews. That same year, the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) accepted the feed term "natural" and established guidelines concerning its use on petfood labels.

Because of budget restrictions for various states in the US, attendance was down at the Association of American Feed Control Officials' (AAFCO) mid-year meeting in January. (AAFCO holds its annual meeting every August, so the January one is referred to as mid-year.) But important work was accomplished.

Some people within the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) have never cared for negative claims on petfood labelsstatements such as, "no ____" or "____free." Although currently there is no model regulation, policy or guideline that explicitly addresses this issue, some regulators believe that even when such statements are technically true, claims regarding absence of an ingredient in a product may cause false disparagement of that safe and acceptable feed ingredient.

A little over a year ago,  I reported on the formation of a National Research Council (NRC)  committee charged with looking at the safety of dietary supplements for non-food-producing animals. While the committee's members were not finalized at that time, I was honored to subsequently be confirmed as a participant in this expert panel.

After a couple of years of discussion and planning, the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), along with the Pet Food Institute (PFI), held a petfood regulatory workshop in early August, the day before AAFCO's Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The intent was to educate both regulators and industry professionals about the AAFCO Model Regulations for Pet Food and Specialty Pet Food (also known as Model Pet Food Regulations).

The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) was held August 1-4 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. During the general session, where the AAFCO membership as a whole votes on the recommendations made by the various committees over the past year, something unexpected happened.