Rendered ingredients in pet food: is the future looking bleak or bright?

Over the past several years pet food manufacturing in the US, as well as globally, has seen unprecedented gains of almost 5% annually projected through 2025. These increases have been accompanied by increased diversity of products and trends for higher- quality pet foods and novel ingredients. As well as continued increases in demand, the pet food industry has increased its quality standards, building pressure on the production, cost and sustainability of rendered ingredients.

Demanding pet parents and retailers

Current pet parents have become more educated on nutrition, and also have expressed the desire for their pets to consume diets more similar to their own. Additionally, owners want the highest- quality ingredients for their pets and are requesting additional visibility in labeling and higher-quality products. Logistics also plays a role, as pet food manufacturers of dry kibble products are often asked by retailers to produce products with up to 2 years shelf life which requires the highest-quality ingredients to ensure the stability of the final product for this length of storage.

Rendering industry faces challenges

The outlook for the United States pet food and rendering industry can look a little troubling. Severe drought in the western half of the country has decimated the cattle industry with herd numbers at their lowest in decades and not projected to reach pre-drought populations until 2027. Beef products for use in pet food production will likely not increase for several years to come, causing higher prices and a limited supply of beef, tallow, and meat and bone meal into the next decade.

Another species that is experiencing reductions in the production of pet food ingredients is poultry. Poultry fat is widely utilized as a palatant sprayed on the external surface of pet food kibble. While 2022 was a record with over 9 billion chickens produced in the United States, safety improvements in poultry processing resulted in reductions of poultry fat as it is carried into the wastewater flow. Additionally, sustainable nutrition practices and breed improvements have resulted in efficiencies of production which have resulted in birds that place less fat and accrete more muscle year after year.

Retailers’ demands for extended shelf life have also increased the need for pet food producers to set limits on the quality of fat they purchase.

The renewable fuels sector is becoming an important customer group for renderers. Animal fats utilization in biofuels continues to increase annually and while only around 25-30% of US production is going to this market, the prices have been higher than in previous years. While the US doesn’t eliminate the use of any categories of fats in pet food, most often quality and purchasing specifications eliminate a portion of lower-quality fats in pet food production and play a part in the price levels of the market.

Therefore, with pet food producers facing some shortages in protein and lower-priced fats, along with meat and poultry processors reducing the output of ingredients going to rendering, the global pet food market is struggling to find economic replacements for these ingredients.

Fighting back

While the story makes it sound like the industry is beginning to falter, there is hope. Through the efforts of Pat Tovey from the Pet Food Institute and Dr.David Meeker from the North American Renderers Association a decision was made to alter this course. In 2017, Dr. Jennifer Martin, a professor at Colorado State University, was enlisted to help guide the industry in fruitful discussion and decision-making, thereby forming the Pet Food Alliance (PFA).

The goals of this group were to combat negative market turns and to proactively capitalize on opportunities for growth through mutual collaboration and, of course, backed by science. For the last 6 years, the alliance has grown to help guide both the rendering and pet food industry through the troubled waters that seem to be looming.

A working group on product safety has focused on the reduction of adulterants in pet food. Utilizing a preventive control of potential hazards approach, as required by the Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine, adulterants like foreign material, microbial hazards, and chemical adulterants are addressed. Since pet food does not currently have the benefit of federal funding, this group has initiated several research projects on the potential risks involved in the transport of ingredients from rendered facilities to pet food manufacturers.

The Product Quality working group is dedicated to the development of achievable quality standards for guidance to the industry. Protein and fat oxidation in rendered products is not fully understood and collaborative experiments are designed to determine and measure thresholds where oxidative reactions negatively impact consumption of food by pets.

Finally, a third group is currently working to mutually address opportunities surrounding consumer perceptions (or misperceptions) and sustainability. Rendering aligns with many UN sustainable development goals and is an important part of the production agriculture circular bioeconomy. Future projects within this working group will likely include modeling the complete cycle of raw material carbon footprint scores and education projects to better elucidate the nutritious ingredients included in pet foods.

Looking to the future

So, there is hope on the horizon and a better appearance of a positive outcome through the collaborative efforts of the Pet Food Alliance. While discussion can often be energized, the focused efforts and cooperation of leaders from both industries proactively working toward science-based solutions to everyday problems, set an example that should be followed everywhere.