Even with quality checks along the way, there’s a chance a pet food formula might end up in production when it shouldn’t have.
This can include instances where the mill received the wrong version of a formulation, an employee skipped a step, there was a changeover to a new supplier, stale nutrition data was used or there was a mismatch between the formula and the label.
Annette Lundeen, senior manager, product management for Datacor Animal Nutrition Group, spoke April 27 during Petfood Essentials as part of Petfood Forum 2026 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She discussed how to identify key sources of formulation risk in pet food production and how to apply digital tools to mitigate those risks.
Formulation defines what gets made and where risk concentrates, Lundeen said. Ingredient variability, supply chain disruptions and production challenges all converge at the formulation step. While downstream quality control can detect problems, it cannot correct upstream errors.
“Most formulation errors aren’t a result of nutrition errors,” she said. “They’re the result of data errors.”
Lundeen identified four key risk vectors in pet food formulation:
- Out-of-spec nutrition: This includes nutrient levels outside of limits set by the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), ingredient or nutrient levels outside specification design, and errors that compound through rounding, moisture correction and optimizer constraints.
- Variability: Variation can occur in supplier ingredient cost, quality and supply, as well as production processes.
- Label and declaration mismatches: This can happen when the guaranteed analysis or ingredient statement no longer reflects the formula or when there is a compliance violation involving AAFCO or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
- Production infeasibility: This can be due to batch constraints such as rounding or minimum weights, or substitutions not aligned to the formula design.
Each handoff in the production process is a point where something can go wrong, Lundeen said. How can pet food producers get benefits without the risk? Traditional or manual controls can fall short, but digital tools can ensure checks when and where they are needed.
Automated formula compliance checks can check formulas for:
- Specification targets
- Nutritional guidelines
- Missing ingredients
- Banned ingredients
- Meeting declaration
- Legal conformance
- Dangerous or toxic levels/combinations
- Production parameters
Lundeen said there are five principles of smart formulation for quality control:
- It has good specification design.
- It continuously captures feedback.
- It uses technology to your advantage.
- It integrates and automates to reduce risk and improve efficiency.
- It has data visibility for improved collaboration and decision-making.
Manual process can work well, Lundeen said, for instance when experienced teams catch obvious errors through pattern recognition. But manual controls break down due to user fatigue, and manual processes applied to high-velocity, rules-bound decisions often fail at scale. Automation replaces inconsistency, she said.
For example, automated formula validation ensures checks are run at key touchpoints in the formulation workflow.
Overall, Lundeen said, modern formulation systems with well-designed processes manufacture compliant, cost-effective products. Formulation quality is no longer about individual expertise; it’s about institutionalizing it into repeatable, auditable systems.
