AAFCO Changes Nutrient Profiles

In August, The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) held its annual meeting. It took eight years but the revised AAFCO Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles were accepted. The new nutrient profiles will be published in 2016. Pet food companies will need to comply with the new nutrient profiles within two years.

During the meeting several key topics were discussed. One of them was the term “human-grade”. AAFCO offers very little guidance as to what the term can accurately include which leaves manufacturers and consumers confused. Documentation is required from the Food and Drug Administration to verify if a product is “human-grade”. The FDA announced that they will no longer assess “human-grade” qualifications. In the United States, it is now up to individual states to define “human-grade” and determine whether or not products may use that term. AAFCO is trying to create guidance information to clarify the term but expect it will take in excess of one year.

Inaccuracies on pet food labels were another topic of discussion. Mislabelling products is not an isolated occurrence. There is the lawsuit against Blue Buffalo and studies abroad reporting false labeling. Mislabeling can include food lacking ingredients on their ingredient list or including ingredients that are not on the ingredient list. Unfortunately, this discussion remained private so no conclusions and/or actions may be published.

Changes have also been made to pulse fractions. Lentils and peas may now be considered acceptable pulse fractions. The Ingredient Definitions Committee has agreed to remove the definition for feed-grade fat product. The original purpose of this definition was to categorize (and allow the usage of) fat ingredients that would only partially meet other existing definitions. The FDA found that the term was being misused to distribute fats that were not suitable or safe for consumption. It is thought that this deletion will have consequences as the industry will have to quickly find suitable fat products.

The updated “Pet Food and Specialty Pet Food Labelling Guide” is almost complete. This document explains several pet food regulations. A Pet Food Labeling Workshop is also being planned for 2017. This should provide valuable information for many in the pet food industry. Another information source is AAFCOs new website, AAFCO Talks Pet Food. This site is designed to answer consumer questions and concerns.

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False Advertising in the Pet Food Industry! What Are You Actually Feeding Your Pet?

In May 2014 Purina filed a false advertising lawsuit against Blue Buffalo. On May 6th, 2015, Blue Buffalo admitted that a “substantial” and “material” portion of Blue Buffalo pet food contained poultry byproduct meal despite advertising that their foods never have chicken or poultry byproduct meals. According to Keith Schopp, a spokesperson for Nestlé Purina Petcare, “Only when faced with undeniable evidence from the lawsuit has Blue Buffalo admitted the truth to the court: a ‘substantial’ and ‘material’ portion of Blue Buffalo pet food sold over the past several years contained poultry byproduct meal. It is unclear to us if or when this practice stopped, or whether any Blue Buffalo pet food containing byproduct meal is still on store shelves.” Read the May 6th, 2015 hearing.

Schopp said, “Despite this admission, Blue Buffalo still has not informed consumers of the presence of poultry byproduct meal in Blue Buffalo pet food, refuses to accept responsibility for the product it sold and is instead blaming its suppliers.” The date of this quotation is unknown. On July 23, 2014, Blue Buffalo challenged the “scientific adequacy and reliability” of the laboratory tests Purina had performed on Blue Buffalo food and called it "junk science". Blue Buffalo did inform their customers about some foods containing poultry by-prodcut meal on October 14th, 2014; five months after Purina filed the lawsuit. Blue Buffalo addresses Purina’s latest allegations; “In October of last year, we informed you that a supplier of ingredients to us and many other well-known brands of pet foods had sent chicken meal to some of their customers that contained poultry by-product meal. In view of this new information, this past Wednesday, May 6, 2015 we informed the Court of our conclusion that a material amount of our dry foods manufactured with mislabeled ingredients shipped prior to May 2014 had been impacted, and requested permission to bring a claim against this former supplier and others involved for intentionally mislabeling ingredients and unjustly enriching themselves. The Court immediately granted our request.”

“Through a $50 million annual advertising campaign that flooded airwaves and pet food aisles alike, Blue Buffalo told consumers over and over, emphatically and without qualification, that its products never contain poultry byproduct meal,” said Schopp. “Blue Buffalo now claims it had no way of knowing the bags contained byproduct meal. A manufacturer is responsible for knowing what’s in its product, and a simple audit of its supply chain would have revealed what we discovered after reviewing the documentation. Blue Buffalo owes consumers an apology for all the false statements, false labels and false advertising. More than this, it is time for Blue Buffalo to be transparent with the public and prove to their ‘pet parents’ that no mislabeled product remains on shelves.”

Blue Buffalo is far from the only company to mislabel pet foods. Researchers (Isabella R Maine, Robert Atterbury, and Kin-Chow Chang) at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, Sutton Bonington Campus, University of Nottingham recently conducted a study on the ingredients in several wet pet foods sold in the United Kingdom. Seventeen popular wet dog and cat foods were included in the study. These foods were then tested for the DNA of four different animal species. In fourteen of the tested foods chicken, bovine, and porcine DNA was found though these proteins were not listed in the ingredients. Only two of the seven foods marketed as “with beef” contained more beef than pork and chicken combined. Maine et al. want to see “Full disclosure of animal contents will (a) allow more informed choices to be made on purchases which are particularly important for pets with food allergies, (b) reduce the risk of product misinterpretation by shoppers.”

There are many articles circulating about the false advertising lawsuit, some may be found here, here, and here.

Poor Disclosure of Ingredients in Wet Pet Foods Sold in the United Kingdom

Researchers (Isabella R Maine, Robert Atterbury, and Kin-Chow Chang) at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, Sutton Bonington Campus, University of Nottingham recently conducted a study on the ingredients in several wet pet foods sold in the United Kingdom. This research was sparked by the contamination of horse meat found in human food labeled as beef in 2013.

Seventeen popular wet dog and cat foods were included in the study. These foods were then tested for the DNA of four different animal species. Horse meat was not detected in any of the tested pet foods. However, in fourteen of the tested foods chicken, bovine, and porcine DNA was found though these proteins were not listed in the ingredients. Only two of the seven foods marketed as “with beef” contained more beef than pork and chicken combined.

This study demonstrated that the pet food industry lacks responsibility for proper labeling and production of wet dog and cat foods. The researchers report that “Full disclosure of animal contents will (a) allow more informed choices to be made on purchases which are particularly important for pets with food allergies, (b) reduce the risk of product misinterpretation by shoppers, and (c) avoid potential religious concerns.”

Note: this research is © 2015 Maine et al.; licensee BioMed Central.

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