Nearly 500 pet food industry professionals recently gathered to hear the latest in pet food innovation, sustainability and emerging trends impacting the industry at the American Feed Industry Association’s 17th annual Pet Food Conference ( AFIA), held at the 2024 International Production & Processing Expo.
“This year’s AFIA Pet Food Conference brought together a record number of attendees, demonstrating the pet food industry’s commitment to learning more about how they can innovate and become more sustainable to meet future pet nutrition challenges,” said Louise Calderwood, AFIA’s director of regulatory affairs. . “This year’s speaker lineup certainly prompted us to think more about how we approach current realities and grasp future opportunities in the industry.”
The conference will include sessions on global market trends, sustainable pet food formulation and packaging, industry impacts on climate change and the buzz around biotics. In addition, the conference hosted a panel discussion with two distinguished guests, Ambassador Doug McKalip, chief agricultural negotiator at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, and Alexis Taylor, under secretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs in US Department of Agriculture. The panel discussion sparked lively conversation surrounding the intersection between agriculture and trade policy and how pet food manufacturers can better engage in educating foreign consumers about their products.
“Looking at the big picture, product personalization and formulation, products that are natural and easy for the consumer to understand and, of course, sustainability are all trends that are important for the pet food industry,” said Lynn Dornblaser, director of innovation and insight at Mintel. “Pet owners want to know what’s in a product, why it’s there and how it got there.”
The AFIA Pet Food Committee, tasked with developing the conference agenda each year, invited four graduate students to present on current research within the pet food industry. Research topics include, “Yeast-based Ingredient Affects Canine Gastrointestinal Microbiata Fermentation Dynamics,” “Situational Analysis for Consumer-Focused Sorghum in North American Pet Foods,” “Effect of Reformulation of a Crystalline Amino Acid Reference Diet on Dogs to Determine Protein Quality of Ingredients,” and “Pet Food Producers’ Perception of Sorghum as an Ingredient in Pet Food/Treats.”
AFIA also announced Angele Thomas, Ph.D., founder and president of Thompson PetTech, as the recipient of its 2024 Friend of Pet Food Award.
