Louise Calderwood Director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs | American Feed Industry Association
With the advent of summer, legislative issues are slowing down but the American Feed Industry Association still has several topics we are tracking closely.
Food Safety: Traceability, kill steps and mycotoxins.
We are hearing from state regulators that some animal feed and pet food manufacturers still do not have a way to trace their products in the event of a recall despite the Food Safety Modernization Act requirements which have been in place for years. The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is considering development of a model regulation which could then be adopted by states to require lot numbers on animal food labels. We feel there is more progress to be made through education rather than moving to a regulatory approach, but it is discouraging that twenty years after the bioterrorism act requirements for trace forward/trace back, some firms are still unable to comply with a fundamental principle for a food safety system.
Similarly, we have been told that some animal food and animal food ingredient manufacturers are experiencing increased attention being paid to mycotoxins during state and federal FSMA inspections. The most recent report on mycotoxins in animal food was published by the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine in 2016. The FDA has expressed an interest in developing multi-analyte testing systems to support rapid testing of several mycotoxins from a single sample of ingredients or feed. It might be a good time to review your procedures for controlling the presence of mycotoxins in ingredients and feed.
Animal Food Additives
In 2020, the AFIA alerted the CVM to 25-year-old policy guidance that has prevented animal food manufacturers from clearly identifying on their product labels the non-nutritive benefits (e.g., reduced food safety pathogens or emissions) their animal food ingredients can produce in animals, unless they are reviewed through the agency’s cumbersome drug approval process.
This request spurred action, leading the CVM to hold a listening session and comment period for stakeholders in late 2022. Many organizations including the Northeast Agribusiness and Feed Alliance joined the AFIA in calling for the agency to regulate these products as feeds, not drugs, given they act primarily in animals’ gut microbiomes and are already safely used on farms in other countries.
By 2023, the CVM began working with Congress to modernize its policy to keep pace with scientific innovation and proposed statutory changes to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that would establish a new regulatory category – zootechnical animal food substances – to review these novel ingredients. The agency said it needed the legal authority of congressional approval to make this change, so the AFIA took its advocacy efforts to Capitol Hill. Once again, NEAFA joined us in sending a clear message to legislators about the need for this change. Thank you!
Now, Congress is considering a legislative solution – the Innovative Feed Enhancement and Economic Development (Innovative FEED) Act – to bring about the necessary changes to put U.S. agriculture on par with its international counterparts and move the United States closer to achieving its public health and environmental challenges. The Act recently passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee on another piece of legislation with a strong showing of bipartisan support. We now wait for the full Senate to act and conference the differences with the House version.