Plastic in Feed and Food

A former employee of a pig feed ingredient company exposes what really goes into feed ingredients.

And, after everything is ground – this is video of the final ingredient:

Though it is hard to believe, what is being displayed in the videos is a legally defined animal feed ingredient – “Recovered Retail Food“. The FDA openly allows livestock animals to be fed expired/spoiled bakery goods, eggs, and dairy products.

AAFCO defines Recovered Retail Food as: “is composed of edible human food products safe and suitable for livestock feed that are collected from retail food establishments, domestic holding facilities, and domestic packing facilities. Permitted recovered retail foods are products from overstocks, lacking consumer acceptance, or beyond their sell-by date that include items such as bruised, cut, or overly-ripe produce (fruit and vegetables), bakery goods, eggs, and dairy products. It shall be safe and appropriately labeled for its intended use and shall be free of material harmful to animals. Materials excluded from this definition include pet foods, products containing: beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish or shellfish. It must not contain packaging materials (e.g., plastics, glass, metal, string, styrofoam, cardboard, and similar materials), flowers, potted plants, or potting soil.”

Just to give you an example of how industry feels about this particular ingredient…

At the August 2015 AAFCO meeting, Recovered Retail Food was being discussed. The example provided during the meeting was expired yogurt cups. The six-pack of yogurt cups – plastic and all – are ground and fed to livestock. Veterinarian Cathy Alinovi stood and objected to this ingredient. She told the industry and regulatory crowd “I don’t want my daughter to be drinking milk with phthalates (element of plastic) in it“. The room loudly boo-ed her. Industry did not agree with any bad opinions of recycled spoiled food being fed to animals.

Phthalates are chemicals used to make plastic, and these chemicals have been found in all types of food including meat and dairy products. Certainly phthalates would be found in the animals that consume plastic and in the meat or milk of the animals that consumed plastic. Phthalates are linked to hormone disruption, cancer, and liver/kidney toxicity in humans and animals.

The AAFCO definition of Recovered Retail Food clearly states “it must not contain packaging materials” – but as you can see in the video, this feed producer ignores the requirement and regulatory authorities have ignored the violation. So why did it take a whistle blower to bring this concerning issue to light? Why hasn’t FDA or state regulatory authorities stopped the use of plastic in feed ingredients?

Is regulatory aware plastic is going into feed ingredients? Regulatory is fully aware that expired grocery foods are collected in their packaging. Regulatory is fully aware there is a risk that some ingredient manufacturers are not removing plastic packaging. But, clearly, regulatory authorities are doing nothing about it.

The FDA has claimed that preventative control rules of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) would improve feed/food/pet food safety – preventing, as example, plastic from being processed into feed ingredients. FSMA laws require manufacturers (of ingredients and finished foods/feeds) to establish and implement procedures that prevent contamination or adulteration. Preventative controls SHOULD require manufacturers to remove all health risks from ingredients and finished pet foods and feeds.

Since 2019, the FDA has performed 413 FSMA inspections at animal food and ingredient manufacturing facilities. These inspections are to validate each company has written preventative controls and successfully implementing them. Sixteen of the 413 inspections were flagged as “Official Action Indicated“. This means that in sixteen manufacturing facility inspections the FDA found serious concerns of manufacturers failing to prevent an adulterated food or ingredient from being produced.

Seventy-nine of those inspections were flagged as “Voluntary Action Indicated“. This means that seventy-nine manufacturers were found to have some issues that were left to the company to correct.

What issues were discovered in the inspections? We don’t know.

Who are the companies that failed inspection? Were they pet food, livestock feed or ingredient suppliers? We don’t know.

The above violations of feed ingredient manufacturing in the videos were reported to FDA. Will the agency do anything? We don’t know.

The FDA puts us all in a position of having to trust they are regulating pet food/food/ingredient manufacturers properly. Trouble is, we have consistent evidence they are not properly regulating the industry.

Opinion: If regulatory is going to continue to fail to properly regulate pet food/animal feed, at least give consumers information so that we can do our own investigations. Make all inspections public record, give consumers the opportunity to read every detail of every inspection. Hiding inspection reports (or only making them available through FOIA requests which take 2+ years to receive) is protecting industry, not consumers.

My thanks to this whistle blower that was brave enough to post the video. It appears he risked all in doing that, he was fired after they went public. Without brave individuals going to the effort to do the right thing, consumers would be kept further in the dark.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food

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