Greg Daniel, strategic industry advisor for pet food/treats and protein at Haskell Co., addressed attendees at Petfood Essentials during Petfood Forum 2026 in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 27 with a practical framework for achieving both product differentiation and manufacturing consistency.
His session, "The nexus of consistency and innovation in pet food manufacturing," centered on the argument that breakthrough pet food innovation is challenging but achievable — and that it requires strategic collaboration, deep process knowledge and early integration of innovation goals into facility design.
The power of 'I don't know'
Daniel opened by reframing what innovation actually requires, arguing that the foundation isn't creativity or vision — it's curiosity. "The power of 'I don't know' shouldn't just stop at 'I don't know,'" he said. "It's: what? How do we learn? What is the next step?" Curiosity paired with effective learning builds experience, he said, but true breakthrough innovation only comes when risk-taking enters the equation.
He illustrated the point with a story from his time at Mars Petcare, where a chance observation in a break room — watching a colleague heat up a meal — led him to put a Dentastix treat in a microwave. The product puffed up, then hardened.
"It's more of 'what happens' learning," Daniel said. "Then asking yourself: how do you create that, if it's something that you're actually looking for?"
Process cannot be overlooked
Daniel said the pet food industry holds a vast reservoir of recipe, product and process knowledge accumulated over decades of research, development and engineering. As experienced talent ages out of the workforce, he warned, the next generation of pet food developers and manufacturers will need to fully understand the inherent interactions between formula, equipment and operations — and the physical and chemical transformations that occur throughout production.
Equipment wear is a prime example, he said. As extruder screws wear over time, the transformations happening inside the barrel change — and so does the product — even when operators haven't intentionally changed a thing. "If you don't do or change out a screw every so many years, you're going to wear out that screw, and your transformations inside that extruder are going to change," Daniel said.
He drew on design-of-experiment work from his time at Procter & Gamble and Iams to illustrate how controllable process variables — moisture, steam, back pressure, screw speed — can be intentionally manipulated to achieve specific outcomes.
In one experiment, adjusting moisture inputs shifted bulk density of an extruded kibble by nearly 100 grams per liter, with downstream effects on bag fill, palatant absorption and texture. X-ray imaging of kibble cross-sections allowed the team to quantify porosity changes with precision. In a separate study using Iams cat food, whole-batch grinding of ingredients — with all other processing conditions held constant — resulted in a four-to-one animal preference over the standard product and roughly 58% fewer brokens and fines.
The goal, Daniel said, is to develop products and processes that are "process center-lined" — delivering superior consistency while generating less waste.
Frontier processing techniques for differentiation
Daniel said some of the most promising avenues for product differentiation in pet food aren't new technologies at all — they're established techniques from adjacent industries that haven't yet been widely adopted in pet food manufacturing. He called them "low-hanging fruit that's been tested in other industries that we can bring to pet food."
One example he highlighted is flash drying and milling, a combined single-step process originally designed for the beer, wine and spirits industry that can achieve a five-log pathogen kill on fresh meat. The process can take a 60–70% moisture slurry from raw material to finely milled powder in roughly four to five seconds. Daniel acknowledged the technology carries a higher cost but said it opens new avenues for ingredient innovation in the industry.
Other frontier techniques he cited include meat grinding with chunk formers capable of creating muscle meat striations, low-moisture extrusion as an alternative to conventional drying, heat-treat oven/dryer systems adapted from the automotive industry that use steam to achieve thermal kill, and electron beam (e-beam) technology adapted from medical sterilization. "I think it's something that's coming back," he said of e-beam. "It's something that we need to pay attention to."
Strategic facility design for product innovation
Daniel argued that the time to embed innovation capability into a production facility is before construction begins — not after equipment has been placed into whatever floor space is available. The framework he outlined spans four areas: product lifecycle management from concept through startup; process development and scale-up; site and system design for food safety and flexibility; and system analytics including simulation modeling and digital twins.
On facility layout, Daniel said decisions about floor materials, wall treatments, airflow, drainage placement and zoning have long-term consequences for a facility's ability to pivot to new product formats.
"If you're making a baked biscuit today and you want to make fresh pet food tomorrow, how does that incorporate? What is the overlap?" he asked.
Looking ahead, Daniel pointed to AI and digital twin technology as the next frontier. He envisions AI systems that integrate formulation and processing data together to drive transformational understanding of product development, compressing timelines significantly.
Simulation and digital twin models, he added, have the potential to cut installation and commissioning time for full processing lines in half.
Daniel concluded, "Through collaboration, we foster a culture of creativity that drives effective learning and converts knowledge into experience, empowering us to take calculated risks that lead to innovation and strengthen our relationship in this industry."
