KANSAS CITY, MO. — About 85 experts across the pet food and rendering industries, as well as academia, came together for the 2025 Pet Food Alliance (PFA) Technical Meeting, held April 30 to May 1 at the Kansas City Convention Center. The overall goal of the meeting was to create a space for cross-industry collaboration to address the latest issues facing the industries and fund research for their solutions. 

PFA is sponsored by the Fats and Protein Research Foundation (FPRF) and Colorado State University (CSU), and is organized by Jennifer Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science’s Center for Meat Safety and Quality at CSU. This year’s meeting was focused on reigniting the purpose of PFA research and collaboration, as well as dedicating more time to the working groups. 

The meeting began Wednesday, April 30, with working group collaborations and a cocktail reception sponsored by Pet Food Processing, in which attendees came together and prepared to discuss their concerns and interests regarding the industry. Attendees returned the next morning for a full day of education and collaboration. 

To kick off Thursday, Charles Starkey, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the North American Renderers Association (NARA), Pat Tovey, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Pet Food Institute (PFI), and Austin Therrell, executive director for the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), gave attendees an update on various regulatory-related topics and concerns facing the industry today. 

Within the update, the big theme was “uncertainty,” as tariff concerns continue to sweep the industry. But, the update also included progress that the speakers’ organizations were making; including new analytics and PCQI training opportunities from NARA, new label changeover workshops from PFI to navigate the current updating of pet food labels, and AAFCO’s current progress with its new SRIS ingredient approval program, which is expected to be launched at the end of 2025. 

Source: ©Sosland Publishing Co./Sofia Muller

Later on, Martin explained the role PFA can have in allowing industry members to partner with academia to ensure that the research being done reflects the challenges being faced in the industry, bridging the gap that often exists between industry members and related academia. She reminded attendees that all registration fees go toward funding the research and projects that the alliance works on, generating a total of $250,000 toward industry-related research since PFA’s inception in 2019. 

“In a time where there are a lot of uncertainties and changes, the one thing that continues to allow these industries to be successful are the partnerships you have with each other,” Martin said. 

Source: ©Sosland Publishing Co./Sofia Muller

At the end of the meeting, leaders from each working group shared their progress toward their current goals. The three working groups — product safety, product quality, and consumer perception and sustainability — have been collaborating for years and spun out several ideas and projects over the years to elevate the industry.

The product safety group has been working on creating a research resource for pathogen control methods for fats, and currently is in the process of creating a survey to collect a variety of research on such methods. Additionally, the group finalized a potential prohibited previous haul list, a document that pet food processors can customize and provide to their suppliers that lists materials prohibited to be hauled by containers intended for pet food manufacturing. 

The product quality group continues to make progress on streamlining an optimal peroxide value measurement method, with its most recent move being requests for proposals (RFPs) from universities for the group to review. With 14 universities now having responded, the group is now narrowing the list to three universities to move forward with collaboration on the project. The group leader, Bruno Chauvet, global material science program lead at Mars Pet Nutrition, shared the group’s objective is to get data generated on the method within the next six months. Read more on the product quality working group’s progress here.

The consumer perception and sustainability group took the time during the meeting to brainstorm specific plans and actions to reach its goal of educating consumers and veterinarians on misconceptions within the pet food industry. To accomplish its goal, the group shared several new ideas, including speaking at veterinary and vet-tech schools, to guide veterinarians toward making more educated food recommendations to pet parents; providing scholarships to students in veterinary technical schools, offering them an alternative career route to traditional veterinary roles; and creating a podcast or webinar to educate consumers on pet food truths.

These ideas and issues brought up by the working groups will be treated as top priorities for the alliance, as it seeks to continue elevating and pushing the pet food, rendering and meat processing industries forward. 

Stay tuned through Pet Food Processing and the Pet Food Alliance website for dates and information about future Pet food Alliance meetings. 

Read more about pet food and treat industry events.