Safety & Quality: Page 154

Safety & Quality

Aflatoxin basics

Penicillin's deadly cousin - past and present

Model for sorption of mycotoxins onto the surface of clay. Current research into mycotoxin reduction involves the mixing of certain types of clays with the contaminated grain. Image credit: Dr. Tim Phillips, TAMU.

Pet Food Regulations

The MUMS Act

Those who follow the animal drug industry are familiar with the developments with MUMS (Minor Use, Minor Species) regulation. Clearly, the law is not intended to apply to dog and cat food products. However, there may be aspects of the MUMS Act that, with a little regulatory creativity, can be put to use to address a pressing petfood issue: namely, the use of novel ingredients.

Pet Food Regulations

Petfood in South Africa

My career in and around the petfood industry has afforded me the opportunity to do a lot of travel to places I normally would never get to visit. Because of the nature of my work, the majority of these outings are domestic, though occasionally I am able to attend international functions as well.

Pet Food Regulations

The new NRC is here!

I admit, I may have been a tad premature in my announcement of the imminent publication of the National Research Council (NRC) Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats based on the release of its preliminary report (Dzanis, D.A., 2003). Regardless, I can now say with utmost confidence that the final NRC report is now available to the public.

Pet Food Regulations

Petfood 101

Few people are inclined to describe the Association of American Feed Control Officials' (AAFCO) Model Regulations for Pet Food and Specialty Pet Food (more succinctly, Model Pet Food Regulations; or MPFR) as particularly "reader-friendly." Efforts to foster greater understanding and more uniform interpretation of the MPFR have been made over the years. An expansive "rewrite" of the regulations to regain a more logically flowing structure and more understandable wording to the document was promulgated in 2000.

Pet Food Regulations

Negative claims on petfood labels can hurt the entire industry

As I penned this month's commentary, the United States was a few weeks away from its 2006 elections. Predictably, the television airwaves were saturated with political advertisements, the majority of which made negative statements regarding a candidate or proposition.

Pet Food Regulations

Global Pet Expo highlights

Although I haven't mentioned it through this venue before, many readers are aware that the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA) has recently retained me as its pet nutrition consultant. One of my duties in that role is to attend the Global Pet Expo, an annual event put on in conjunction with the Pet Industry Distributors Association (PIDA).

Pet Food Regulations

FDA public meeting focuses on Health Consequence Scoring

The Center for Veterinary Medicine in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a public meeting on September 12, 2006, at its headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, USA, to discuss progress on development of its Animal Feed Safety System (AFSS). This program, initiated in 2003, is a multi-pronged approach by the agency to identify and address gaps in protection against risks to animal and public health from exposure to animal feed, including petfood.

Pet Food Regulations

ACVN petitions AAFCO

The annual meeting of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) was held recently. The weather was very warm, though perhaps not as "hot" as some of the topics discussed during the committee sessions. I added a little fuel to the fire by introducing a petition on behalf of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (ACVN) to amend the AAFCO Model Pet Food Regulations that would, among other things, make calorie content statements on dog and cat food labels mandatory.

Pet Food Regulations

AAFCO update

Last month I discussed the American College of Veterinary Nutrition's petition to the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) to amend the Model Pet Food Regulations regarding calorie content statements on petfood labels. This was not the sole issue of interest at the AAFCO Annual Meeting.

Pet Food Regulations

AAFCO annual meeting shows some progress

The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) annual meeting was held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, on August 5-7, 2006. Everyone I spoke to especially enjoyed the bull riding event at the local arena on Saturday evening. For some reason, I had a particularly hard time with my cell phone while in the downtown Oklahoma City area. Based on the progress made in some of the committee sessions, I'd say my phone wasn't the only thing having trouble connecting.

Pet Food Regulations

The 'complete and balanced' petfood: is it a myth?

In my research for last month's commentary on the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), I ran across a long-argued premise made by someone in the petfood industry that there is no such thing as a "complete and balanced" petfood. In the writer's opinion, no single commercial food is truly suitable to serve as the sole source of nutrition, so any implication to that effect for a product is no less than blatant consumer fraud.

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