Minnesota sent 5 state government employee to the August AAFCO 2019 meeting. Minnesota should not send any representatives to the January AAFCO meeting based on AAFCO ban of consumers.
Contact page for Governor Tim Waltz: https://mn.gov/governor/contact/
Contact page for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison: https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Forms/ConsumerAssistanceRequest.asp
Email content:
Dear Governor Waltz and Attorney General Ellison,
I am writing to you requesting that Minnesota Department of Agriculture immediately withdraw from participation in the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) meeting to be held January 21-23, 2020 in Albuquerque, NM. State tax dollars are used to send multiple state employees to these meetings.
It is currently inappropriate for Minnesota to use tax dollar funds to send representatives to this meeting; AAFCO has banned consumers and consumer stakeholder organizations from attending/participating in this meeting. Until AAFCO opens the meetings to consumers and consumer stakeholder organizations, allowing consumer input in pet food regulatory decisions – Minnesota should not play a role in the consumer ban.
AAFCO charges Department of Agriculture representatives $400 (per person) to attend, AAFCO charges non-members $550.00 to attend meetings. Source: https://www.aafco.org/Portals/0/SiteContent/Meetings/Midyear/2020/2020_Midyear_Registration_Form.pdf?v20191101-2
The AAFCO website states “Anyone can register for and attend an AAFCO midyear or annual meeting.” Source: https://talkspetfood.aafco.org/roleofaafco However, multiple pet owners and pet owner stakeholder advocates received an email from AAFCO Board of Directors (cc’d on this email) stating “the AAFCO resources not accessible to you during this period include AAFCO meetings, the Feed BIN, AAFCO committees and work groups participation, and any other AAFCO resources not specifically identified here.”
AAFCO is a private organization, however its members are government employees who participate in the AAFCO process as representatives of government. Therefore, Minnesota must immediately withdraw from participation in the upcoming AAFCO meeting based on unfounded bias shown by AAFCO against pet food consumers. If Minnesota participates in this AAFCO meeting in any manner, Minnesota would be condoning and/or endorsing AAFCO’s consumer ban – an attitude I would hope that Minnesota does not want to project to its many pet food consumer residents.
(Your signature)
