HUMAN GRADE OR FEED GRADE PET FOOD? WHO DECIDES?

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?).

The biggest topic for discussion was the definition of "human grade" versus "feed grade". In my opinion, this was one of the most important discussions of the meeting. Hundreds of pet food companies currently use the terms "USDA inspected meats", "human grade", "human quality", etc, but can they legally make those claims and what do they really mean? (And since USDA inspected poultry can contain salmonella, how helpful is that statement?) Since there is currently no definition, no one is chasing down companies making those claims. According to the FDA, they had so many requests for approval to use the term human grade that they could not possibly handle them all. So they responded by pushing the requests back to the states and allowing them to decide who can use the claims "human grade". Interestingly, the term "feed grade" has been used since the beginning of AAFCO, but was never defined. (I'm happy to say a new definition was made this year and that will be in the next blog.) While no consensus was reached at this meeting for a complete definition of human grade, we were promised that the working group would bring back a completed definition to be voted on for a Model Bill at the August AAFCO meeting. The current proposal includes:

EVERY ingredient AND the resulting product must be stored, handled, processed, and transported in a manner that is consistent and compliant with regulations for good manufacturing practices for human edible foods.

This is important because a lot of companies say "human grade" but then don't handle the products like human grade. With the new definition, the manufacturing facility would also have to be licensed as a human food facility. However, the product would still have to be clearly labeled as intended for use as animal food. The whole product could be labeled "human grade", but individual ingredients would NOT be able to be listed as "human grade". If a company used all human grade meats, grains, vegetables, and fruits, but then they added a feed grade vitamin/mineral supplement, the product would not be able to be labeled or advertised as "human grade". If the products were assembled into a pet food product in a pet food plant, the resulting product would not be considered "human grade". It will be interesting to see how many pet food companies really care enough to go to the extreme measures of having a "human grade" pet food with these restrictions. I got the impression the folks at FDA don't expect more than a handful to do this, making their job easier (actually, I got the impression they don't expect anyone to do this).

Of course, as I am writing this, I have a pet food package label sitting in front of me that says "100% human-grade ingredients". Will this be the company that goes for the "human grade" labeling?