Careful pet owners found that most pet food packaging bags are marked with: "AAFCO's XX test confirmed that XXX provides balanced and complete nutrition for long-term consumption in dogs / cats".

So is AAFCO's staple food the right choice?

What is AAFCO?

The American Feed Management Association, AAFCO, is a voluntary membership association of local, state and federal agencies that regulates the sale and distribution of animal feed and animal drug remedies.

The membership consists mainly of regulatory officials related to animal feed safety laws and regulations, as well as technical personnel from pet food/ingredient manufacturers such as Nestle, Sears, Cargill, etc.

It can be said that AAFCO standard is the most important authoritative standard of pet food at this stage.

Does meeting AAFCO standards mean being healthy?

After the AAFCO standard became popular, some pet owners fully trusted AAFCO, believing that as long as the pet staple food conforms to AAFCO, it must be safe and healthy. But that's not the case.

First, the FOOD and Drug Administration is responsible for regulating pet food.

The FDA inspects pet food manufacturers to ensure that they recall pet food that may be problematic, such as food that is contaminated and that may cause any illness or death.

Secondly, although AAFCO complies with the regulatory spirit of FDA, it is not responsible for regulating the quality of pet food, and only supervising the food brand label will not mislead consumers.

In fact, the AAFCO standard, which everyone prides itself on, is the lowest standard for pet food in the United States.

AAFCO is used to determine whether the pet staple food provided by the business meets the baseline nutritional requirements for pets.

In other words, only those that meet AAFCO standards can be called pet staples. Conversely, it can be understood as unqualified.

Pet food, on the other hand, can easily meet AAFCO standards by adding additives.

Exceeding the standard food does not necessarily represent good, may also be added a lot of additives.

How to define the quality of pet food?

The defining standard of high quality grain mainly lies in --
High quality ingredients + balanced ratio + reduced extra additions.

Due to cost control and other problems, many pet food manufacturers use plant protein to replace animal protein.

Compared to animal proteins, which have a balanced range of amino acids, plant proteins lack certain amino acids necessary for metabolism in dogs and cats and are not easily absorbed by animals. Therefore, additional additives must be added in order to meet the amino acid standards labeled in AAFCO.

This also demonstrates from the side, why AAFCO should specify the various amino acid values in the nutrition ingredient list.

If animal protein is used, there is no shortage or absence of certain amino acid species per se.

Therefore, it is the way to measure the quality of a grain through what raw materials and proportion to make pet grain reach AAFCO standard.

What exactly is the energy that pets need?