It has no authority in and of itself, but is used by regulatory agencies in each state as a source for standards.
AAFCO publishes a book that is updated regularly. This book is over 600 pages and can be purchased by anyone for $100. Given that pet food labeling contains esoteric jargon, this book would need to be purchased, read, and understood by a consumer in order to know what is truly in the pet food they purchase.
Not just any food or ingredient is approved. Anything a producer might wish to use, even if Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), approved for human consumption, or even if fed and eaten with benefit for thousands of years, cannot be put into commercial pet foods unless approved by AAFCO.
This approval process is tedious and in the hands of those assigned by AAFCO. Reviewers are people with various biases including ties to an industry that may be impacted positively or negatively by an approval or denial of an ingredient for listing.
The result is undue restriction of ingredients with proven health benefits, such as various nutraceuticals and functional nutrients, and approval of ingredients with potential harmful health impact, such as dyes, synthetic preservatives, drugs, and other known toxins.
Historically, other officially approved ingredients have included:
- dehydrated garbage
- undried processed animal waste products
- polyethylene roughage replacement (plastic)
- hydrolyzed poultry feathers
- hydrolyzed hair
- hydrolyzed leather meal
- poultry hatchery by-product
- peanut hulls
- ground almond shells
From the regulators' standpoint, they operate from the simplistic nutritional idea that the value of food has to do with percentages of a few of the known nutrients and that there is no special merit to any particular ingredient. They deny the tens of thousands of scientific research articles proving that the kind of ingredient and its quantity and quality can make all the difference in terms of health.
So regulators are certainly not the place to go to determine the best pet food or find health. By their way of thinking, as long as a packaged food achieves certain percentages, regardless of ingredients, the manufacturer can claim the food is 100% complete and balanced. The favorite child of AAFCO, the complete and balanced claim, should be forbidden on all pet food packaging, just as it was on human infant formulas after the health <<disaster those created>>.
This old school nutritional view is standard practice in human hospitals as well where official dieticians feed diseased and metabolically starved patients a fare of jello, instant potatoes, powdered eggs, white flour rolls and oleomargarine because their charts say such diets contain the correct percentages of protein, fat, etc. Hospitals are a good place to go if you want to get sick.
Once a nutrient or ingredient is defined by AAFCO, it is etched in stone. For example, if chicken meat is defined as a source of protein, producers would not be able to mention all the other nutrients provided by chicken. For an actual example, a company was using a naturally mined mineral AAFCO requires to be called "montmorillinite." AAFCO defined the ingredient as a processing aid, even though it contains over 70 important trace minerals. A company who mentioned this nutritional value had its products banned from a state (the home of the then president of AAFCO). When the company removed the trace mineral language, the state would still not register the products because the company once stated the truth that the ingredient contained trace minerals.
Perhaps the most dangerous spawn of AAFCO is the complete and balanced myth and the misleading AAFCO feeding trial that supposedly substantiates it. Giving consumers confidence they can feed one AAFCO approved processed food day in and day out for a pet's entire life is arguably criminal for the disease and death this practice is responsible for. The myth only serves to justify AAFCO's existence and the building of multibillion dollar pet food industries that profit from their foods being fed continuously.
AAFCO is not an independent body free from the influence of commercial interests. It can also perpetuate harmful nutritional biases. The yearly AAFCO meetings host state regulatory officials and emissaries from the mega pet food giants. State agencies that register products and charge yearly fees based upon sales, benefit from staying on good terms with the big boys. The big boys benefit by hobnobbing with and befriending regulators who then turn a blind eye to <<fraudulent marketing schemes>>.
In the meantime, small and innovative producers (not able to afford to hobnob at AAFCO meetings) are put through the ringer by some state regulators for <<picayune label issues>> having nothing to do with health.
In the end, the AAFCO-state regulatory-big pet food cabal does more harm than good. Pet food companies should be able to produce innovative products with safe and health giving nutrients and simply be required to be honest and reasonably substantiate any claims.
Consumers need to be aware of the impediments to good nutrition and the dangers that this cabal presents. Thus, rather than rely on the specious complete and balanced claim (which serves only the cabal), pet owners need to take <<more control of feeding>> by rotating well designed foods from <<trusted companies>>, using well designed supplements, and <<creating meals>> right their own kitchen.
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