Everyone involved with pets should want the same thing — speedy innovation so that we continue to build products with new ingredients, new nutritional discoveries, new health claims and new products to improve the life of our family pets. To ensure this, a systematic review and approval process for new ingredients is needed to provide safety. These processes should be challenged and adjusted regularly to avoid impediments, sluggish decisions and generally poor communication. Pet ingredient approval pathways are rarely challenged, and previous ingredients do not get reviewed regularly to update naming. Ingredients are often not submitted for GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) approval or feed additive review because of long timelines, prohibitive costs and low financial return. It is difficult to challenge and quickly change historical names of ingredients in the pet food industry (for example: corn gluten meal to corn protein meal).
In our evolving pet product environment, changes are happening. New 2024 Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) labeling requirements (PFLM – Pet Food Labeling Modernization) were announced which will affect the look of packaging and will cost billions to implement into the marketplace. The goal is that consumers will gain new knowledge about the food products they choose to give to their pets. We hope this goal is proven. Additionally, the PURR Act of 2024 (Pet Food Uniform Regulatory Reform Act) has been initiated in Congress to launch a new process to modernize how to eliminate “red tape” in regulations and allow pet food makers and consumers the “best nutritional outcomes.” The timeline of this new proposal is unknown, but we actively await new conversations surrounding these efforts.
