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Here are my notes from the Ingredient Definitions Committee meeting. This is where human grade and feed grade were approved, where a verbal fight took place with PFI, and I’ll start with a funny story that happened just before the meeting began.This was a 3 hour meeting – thus…there are many notes.As an consumer representative adviser to this committee, we get to sit ‘at the table’. The ‘table’ is in the front of the room, with AAFCO members, FDA members, and advisers sitting all around it (it is ‘U’ shaped). Sitting on one side of me was Dr. Jean Hofve, sitting on the other side of me was an AAFCO State Department of Agriculture representative. As I sat down the AAFCO member joked – asking me if I brought the blender. Confused, I asked: ‘blender?’ He said, the blender for the margarita’s. (These meetings are tough, and margarita’s would be welcomed by most everyone to help us through them – but it was meant as a joke.) I joked back that I forgot the blender – my bad for forgetting. But interestingly I told him one of our group had an organic margarita at the bar last night. His response: “At this point, I’d settle for a feed grade margarita.”. . .continued
The Pet Food Committee meeting at the mid-year AAFCO meeting was, as usual, one of the most interesting. One of the best things to come out of the committee recently, in my opinion, will be the addition of calorie content statements on the labels of all pet foods, supplements, and treats, by January 2017. This could provide extremely valuable information to owners of obese pets who hand out treats like candy, ignoring the fact that there are actually countable calories being doled out.Another step forward was a published method for determining the carbohydrate content of pet foods. Currently, carbohydrate content is not listed on the bag under ingredient analysis, leaving the calculations up to the pet owner, assuming they have any idea how to even arrive at an estimate (most have no clue, why would they?). . .continued
