American Feed Industry Association hosts Pet Food Conference

The American Feed Industry Association hosted a Pet Food Conference in conjunction with the 2012 International Poultry and International Feed Expo in Atlanta.
The association announced a new third-party facility certification program designed specifically for manufacturing pet food and pet food ingredients. The Pet Food Manufacturing Facility Certification Program and the Pet Food Ingredient Facility Certification Program were developed by the association's pet food and quality committees with input from third-party food safety experts. These two programs build upon the association's Safe Feed/Safe Food program, and are designed to monitor the process controls specifically related to the manufacturing of pet food.
“AFIA sees this as a model program for the entire pet food industry,” said Joel G. Newman, the association's president and CEO. “I commend the pet food committee for developing this program to help ‘raise the bar’ for their own industry.” The PFMF and PFIF certification programs were designed to meet requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act regulations, and the american feed industry association says it is seeking Food and Drug Administration recognition of these programs. “In 2004 AFIA launched the first third-party feed facility certification program, Safe Feed/Safe Food program, addressing the needs of the feed industry. And then in 2010 the International Safe Feed/Safe Food program was added to provide a tool for companies that wish to meet the EU requirements. Now today, adding the Pet Food Facility program to the family of third-party certification program makes sense not only for our members, but for the pet food industry,” Newman said.