Management of animal feed safety in the USA
Author: Hee Hui Peng (Management Consultant)
Food generally expected to be safe may become unsafe due to the introduction of hazards during production, processing, storage, transport, or final preparation for consumption. For food derived from animals, the hazard may originate from a number of these and other sources including the consumption by food production animals of contaminated food.
Animal feed ingredients and mixed feeds produced and used in the United States have a strong safety record. Government attention has been focused typically on known safety issues such as unsafe tissue residues resulting from feeding of medicated feeds, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), Salmonella, and unsafe food additives. But, because the efforts didn’t address feed safety in a comprehensive manner, issues affecting safety of animal feed still happened.
Serious issues of animal feed safety
In recent years, unanticipated problems have become serious issues, affecting the safety of human food and the health of animals.
- In 2002,foreign government discovered high levels of dioxins in a mineral product for animal feed that the country had imported from the United States.
- In 2007, the public become alarmed when imported feed ingredients that were deliberately contaminated with melamine and related compounds to make the ingredients appear to have a higher protein value. The contaminated ingredients were used in pet food that sickened and caused the death of some dogs and cats throughout the United States.
Regulation set for animal feed production
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) made preventive control provisions for animal feed, a significant part of the U.S. feed safety effort. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a regulation in September 17, 2015, establishing the requirements for food for animals:
- Good manufacturing practice (manufacturing, processing, packing, and holding)
- Hazard analysis
- Risk-based preventive controls
The improvement of AFSS
Recently, the AFSS team has developed an easy to use Web page for information about safe feed. The page has six topic as following:
- Seek ingredient approval
- Manufacture animal feed
- Learn about good animal feeding practices
- Report a problem
- Ship animal feed
- Learn about FSMA (the Food Safety Modernization Act)
Source: www.FDA.gov/SafeFeed
