ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Feed Industry Assoc. (AFIA) applauds the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and the Assoc. of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) for their agreement to reauthorize the AAFCO-CVM Memorandum of Understanding regarding the process to approve animal food ingredients.

The extension will run through Oct. 1, 2017.

CVM also announced last week a roadmap detailing how the agency will review ingredients currently listed in AAFCO’s Official Publication in order to meet the requirement for ingredient "standards" in the FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007.

This has been an ongoing dialogue with the AFIA, FDA and AAFCO for several years.

"AFIA has worked diligently toward a fix for the FDAAA ingredient standards issue and ensuring the AAFCO ingredient review process and current AAFCO definitions remain in place, as they are referenced in most state feed laws as the official ingredient definitions," said Leah Wilkinson, AFIA director of ingredients, pet food and state affairs.

"Although this process has been slow to reach fruition, we now have a firm commitment that CVM will remain part of the AAFCO process providing companies confidence as they contemplate investments when they consider bringing new products into the marketplace."

The roadmap highlights the process the CVM will undertake to determine whether each AAFCO ingredient is Generally Recognized as Safe, a food additive or an ingredient that is safe for use but potentially in need of additional paperwork to qualify as a federally approved food (feed) additive.

The AFIA remains convinced the products in the AAFCO Official Publication are safe based on FDA’s prior review of safety data. This roadmap is merely a means to federally recognize an AAFCO/FDA process that has been successfully used for the past 35 years, and will move these ingredients closer to FDA’s idea of being federally approved ingredients.

"Even though CVM’s announcement is a strong step in the right direction, AFIA still has concerns that need to be addressed. We want to make sure this process is fair, workable and practical for getting new, safe ingredients to the marketplace in a timely manner," said Wilkinson.

"CVM has a substantial backlog of both food additive petitions and AAFCO ingredient requests. We are working to ensure these resources are in place so timely reviews can be conducted and CVM can implement this roadmap in the near future."