Insightful educational opportunities await at Petfood Forum 2025

If you want in-depth insight into major trends shaping the pet food industry, this year’s Petfood Forum educational sessions have you covered.

Petfood Forum 2025 will take place April 28-30 at the Kansas City Convention Center. The 2025 agenda includes five educational tracks taking place via five concurrent sessions each on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 29.

“We develop each year’s concurrent session tracks, as well as other Petfood Forum sessions, based on the important issues of the industry at the time,” said Debbie Phillips-Donaldson, editor-in-chief of Petfood Industry. “In fact, through our call for papers, we tend to get the most submissions for those industry ‘hot topics,’ which helps guide how we put together the program. And we look at feedback to recent conferences for which sessions and topics seemed to resonate most with attendees.”

This year’s five tracks will zero in on the pet food market, technology, nutrition, ingredients, and career development and leadership. The latter is inspired by the Women in Petfood Leadership initiative.

“The sessions are open to anyone at the conference — not just women and not just people who have become involved in that program,” explained Phillips-Donaldson. “The Women in Petfood Leadership group will be helping suggest and select topics and speakers. We hope this will be just the beginning of Petfood Forum education to help people develop their careers and maximize their potential in their current and future roles.”

Concurrent sessions: Tuesday, April 29, 1:30-4:15 pm

• Pet food market. The first session will focus on market data to dive deep into health and wellness while the second will explore ingredient trends and consumer perceptions.  
• Pet food technology. AI and its impact to the market will be a focus in the first session; new processing technologies will be covered in the second.
• Pet food nutrition. These two sessions will focus in on senior pets and obesity, life stages and nutrient profiles.
• Pet food ingredients. The first session will zero in on the pet microbiome and functional ingredients, the second session covers sustainable ingredients.
• Career development and leadership. Details for these sessions, powered by the Women in Petfood Leadership, will be coming soon.

In addition to insightful educational sessions, Petfood Forum offers other educational opportunities with its Petfood Essentials seminar, keynotes and closing panel discussion.Paul Ward Photography

More educational opportunities

In addition to insightful educational sessions, Petfood Forum offers other educational opportunities with its Petfood Essentials seminar, keynotes and closing panel discussion.

Petfood Forum kicks off its event on Monday, April 28, with its daylong interactive, informal educational pre-conference seminar, Petfood Essentials. Held the day before the opening of Petfood Forum, this year’s Essentials will take a deep dive into the hottest topic in the industry: sustainability.

This year, the Petfood Essentials team is partnering with the Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) to develop at least part of the Essentials program. Experts, including those with PSC, will provide information and insights on key points along the sustainability journey, how to determine your environmental footprint and how to make your supply chain more sustainable. Sessions will look at sustainability in pet food ingredients, packaging and more, and participants will also learn through a hands-on life cycle analysis (LCA) group exercise. A separate registration is needed for this daylong seminar. Be sure to sign up early to secure your spot.

On Tuesday, April 29, the opening keynote will be the Macro-economic outlook and what it means for pet food companies and pet owners with Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics, Budget Lab at Yale Law School. Tedeschi will provide a forecast for upcoming changes and events with the economy, inflation, consumer spending, the labor force, the financial markets and other key indicators.

On Wednesday, April 30, the opening session will be Break the bottle: How to shatter limiting beliefs and achieve peak performance in pet food development and marketing with Michael Allison, CEO, Adversity Academy Leadership Development Co. Allison helps leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals break through the self-imposed barriers that hold them back and ways to overcome them.

The closing panel on April 30 will focus on the state of U.S. pet food ingredient approvals. Announcements from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) in 2024 have led to significant changes to how ingredients for pet food are approved. Join representatives from AAFCO, the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), FDA and the Pet Food Institute (PFI) as they discuss the current state of approvals and other regulatory and legal matters and answer your questions.

To stay updated on the full Petfood Forum 2025 agenda, click here.

 Petfood Forum and Petfood Essentials show dates are April 28-30, 2025, in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. To stay informed on the latest event developments, go to PetfoodForumEvents.com.