This episode was recorded at the 2025 Petfood Forum in Kansas City, Missouri.
This episode was recorded at the 2025 Petfood Forum in Kansas City, Missouri.
In 2020, the Institute for Feed Education and Research (IFEEDER), American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), North American Renderers Association (NARA) and Pet Food Institute (PFI) collaborated to publish the Pet Food Consumption Report. The organizations collaborated again to publish a second edition in 2025, which Lara presented at Petfood Forum. Data sets from both brick-and-mortar sales and Amazon sales were used to create the report. (6:16)
Lara explains that data analysts reverse-engineered product labels from dog and cat food and treats in the dataset to identify trends, including ingredient use, value, tonnage, upstream value, and what pet food adds to the economy. Dry dog food makes up the largest volume of sales at 55%, and also takes the number one spot in value of sales at 38%. Dry cat food is the second largest by volume (16%), followed by dog treats (11%). However, dog treats are the second largest by value (20%), followed by dry cat food (12%). (7:57)
Louise and Charles talk about trends in non-veterinary spending on pets, cultural shifts in consumer perceptions of pet ownership, pet food trends in developing countries, and consumer understanding of human and pet nutrition needs. (12:04)
Lara notes that the top five ingredients in the report are chicken and chicken products, whole grains, milled grains, beef and beef products, and marine-based ingredients. Chicken and chicken products made up 2.2 million tons, while marine-based products represented about 500,000 tons. Marine products doubled in volume from the 2020 report to the 2025 report, signifying a trend of higher value, more select ingredients coming into the pet food space. Salmon and cod are the primary marine ingredients. Lara remarks that the specialty ingredients side of the report is fascinating, with items like blueberries, tomatoes, peas, beet pulp, cranberries, and flaxseed making an appearance. Louise explains the 2020 report had less than 400 ingredients, while more than 600 ingredients appear in the 2025 report. Charles notes that since the last report, there has been a slight shift to more fresh meat products and slightly less rendered products. (16:10)
About half the cat and dog food is made up of upcycled ingredients. The panel discusses consumer perceptions of byproducts and co-products, the sustainability role that these products play in the industry, and their organizations’ commitments to education and policy efforts. (22:27)
Pet food manufacturers purchase 9.8 million tons of ingredients valued at about $13.2 billion, which then represents about $52 billion in sales. Lara talks about some of the upstream impacts of the pet food industry. Pet food is manufactured in 43 states, with the top five being Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and California. Each of these states is selling more than $700 million worth of ingredients to pet food manufacturing. Relatively few pet food ingredients are imported; amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and marine products would be the exception. Manufactured pet food has a fairly strong export market. (29:55)
Lastly, panelists share their take-home thoughts. (35:56).
The 2025 report is available at https://www.ifeeder.org/. You can download the full report as well as graphics, and there is a feature that allows you to create your graphs and charts with the data.
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Scott Sorrell (00:10):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Today we're continuing our series of companion animal topics. This next one's gonna be titled Pet Food Ingredient Trends, insights from the 2024 Sales. And that's with Lara Moody with Eye Feeder. Lara, welcome. This is not your first time to the pub, maybe the first time without a drink, but So welcome back.
Lara Moody (00:42):
Thank you for having me on again.
Scott Sorrell (00:43):
Ah, you're very welcome. Lara, give us kind of a little bit of background about yourself, and then I want you to follow up with telling us a little bit about your pet.
Lara Moody (00:49):
Yeah. So, for pets not an animal nutritionist by training, you often have a lot of those on. Yes. I'm an agricultural and biosystems engineer by training. I spent time doing university extension and research work in the animal manure management space, which I love manure. I told somebody that the other day and they were like, I've never heard anybody say that before. And then I worked for the fertilizer industry doing commercial fertilizer work and then into the feed space. So now I'm the executive director for the Institute for Feed Education and Research. And so I feel like I've come full circle back to the animal work that I did in the beginning of my career in the university system. Yeah. Interesting. At home I have a 20-year-old cat who's still doing fantastic. And then I have two larger pets that are really where my heart are, which are my two horses, two horses, Denali and
Scott Sorrell (01:41):
Pac-Man. Yeah. Good. Well, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Looking forward to the conversation in the color commentator role today is Louise Calderwood. Louise, tell us a little bit about yourself and your pet.
Louise Calderwood (01:52):
Very good. Thank you, Scott. I was that 3-year-old kid who loved animals with hooves. Okay. Have no idea where it came from, but I loved animals with hooves. And so that of course went through the horse era, which is still very much with me as Lara. But very quickly turned into dairy cattle. And so my background is dairy cow, reproductive physiology who knew that pet food could be so interesting. So after a career with education regulation and production in the dairy realm here I am at a FIA dealing with, with pet Food.
Scott Sorrell (02:24):
And where were you an, an educator? I was
Louise Calderwood (02:28):
With the University of Vermont Extension. I was a regional dairy specialist for 10 years. I was Vermont's Deputy Secretary of Agriculture for eight years, self-employed for 12. I started at a very young age and I'm now have been with a FIA will be starting, I dunno, my seventh or eighth year. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (02:44):
It's coming back to me. We've had this conversation before and I think, you know, the bur hands from Vermont. Of course.
Louise Calderwood (02:49):
Yes. They're close neighbors and dear friends.
Scott Sorrell (02:51):
Yeah. Buzz did a podcast with me a couple weeks ago, so Yeah. Yeah,
Louise Calderwood (02:55):
Yeah. No, very, very dear friends. Yeah,
Scott Sorrell (02:57):
Good people.
Louise Calderwood (02:58):
And as far as my pets at home, I'm the person who keeps Goldfish alive for 16 years.
Scott Sorrell (03:05):
How big does a 16-year-old goldfish get to be?
Louise Calderwood (03:08):
I mean, mine are just 25 cent pet store goldfish with names. And then very sadly, put a beloved dog down three weeks ago. And just really, my heart goes out to everybody because they are members of our family. And then, like Lara, I've got the, the granddaughter's, 30-year-old pony and my competitive young horse.
Scott Sorrell (03:28):
Excellent. Well, thanks for joining us in the coho co-pilot seat is Dr. Charles Starkey. Charles, welcome. And tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Charlies Starkey (03:37):
My background's really animal nutrition. I attended K State and did a lot of feed manufacturing. So I've been working in the feed industry for over 20 years now. I've worked closely as a member of a FIA and, and with, with both Lara and Louise and have sorry. Now, just recently I was at Auburn University for eight years and then have just recently joined the North American Renters Association for the last two years. And so it's great to, to be able to continue to work with a FIA and other associations on, on projects collaborative
Scott Sorrell (04:16):
Leads. Excellent.
Dr. Charlies Starkey (04:18):
And as far as pets, we we raise cattle, hula, current hounds Oh yeah. For hunting dogs. And, and they're, some of them turn out just to be big pets and some of them we, we sell for running, so
Scott Sorrell (04:32):
Yeah. They're striking looking dogs, though. I've thought about getting one myself, but, and what do you hunt with those?
Dr. Charlies Starkey (04:37):
Hogs, Usually. Yeah
Scott Sorrell (04:38):
Hogs. Okay. Alright. Cool. Excellent. We'll talk about that later. That's interesting. Lara coming back to you. Yeah. Give us an overview of what your presentation's gonna be about today.
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Lara Moody (06:16):
Yeah. So every few years we are interested in knowing kind of what's going on in the pet food ingredient space. So prior to me coming to I feeder four years ago a FIA and nara, north American Renders and PFI Pet Food Institute, and I feeder partnered to develop the pet food consumption report. That report was using 2019 data and it came out in 2020. And so we all got together last year and said we should update it.
Scott Sorrell (06:44):
And where are you getting that data from?
Lara Moody (06:45):
Yeah, so we're updating that, and that information comes from the purchase of Nielsen's data. And so we actually do a buy of SK SKUs. We do a buy of the data sets both from brick and mortar sales, as well as Amazon sales this time. So we added online sales to the discussion
Scott Sorrell (07:05):
That has not always been available. Is that, is that correct?
Lara Moody (07:08):
I, I'm not gonna promise one way or the other, but of course it's not always been available because we didn't always have Amazon.
Scott Sorrell (07:13):
Yeah. We didn't always have Amazon. Yeah.
Lara Moody (07:15):
True. But, but our Amazon data covers one third of online sales, and so we factor that in when we're looking at the report.
Scott Sorrell (07:22):
And then maybe it's chewy. I was thinking of, is that, is that not available in the data readily available?
Lara Moody (07:28):
I'm not, I, I can't say a hundred percent. I know that when we looked at how we could purchase data and what made sense to purchase that the Amazon was the most representative on online sales. Yeah. And so that's why we ended up buying that piece of it to add to our brick and mortar score. Yeah. They also have an understanding of what fraction of online sales is within that. And so then we could like scale up accordingly.
Scott Sorrell (07:51):
Yeah. Makes sense. Sorry, I got you off track. That's okay. Alright, go. Why don't you just go ahead and continue with the, the presentation then. Yeah.
Lara Moody (07:57):
So anyways, with the, with the report we are now looking at 2023, like second half of 2023, first half of 2024 data. And within that they reverse engineer the group. We works with reverse engineers, product labels. So essentially we get the SKU data for all the products that are in the data set that we buy from Nielsen's. And then they look at all of the product labels that are linked to those. They identify 95% of the products and then they start looking at the ingredients in the back of them, and then reverse engineer and compile those, which brings us to understanding like all the ingredients that are currently being used in pet food. And then we can start looking at trends. We can look at the value of them. We could look at tonnage, we could look at the upstream value of them that they bring what, what pet food adds to the economy. There's so many things we can talk about relative to what we find in that report.
Scott Sorrell (08:53):
Yeah. Kind of curious. You know, you, you look at a label, you don't necessarily know how much of that specific ingredient is in there. How do you come up with that to come up with your tonnage? You wanna
Lara Moody (09:01):
Talk about pet food labels?
Louise Calderwood (09:03):
I can talk about pet food labels, but you know, the, you know, the science on the tonnage. So the order in the pet food label is the order of the ingredients. Yeah. So
Scott Sorrell (09:12):
You make assumptions, right?
Louise Calderwood (09:13):
So they, they build assumptions. I, I am certain they build assumptions on what's the guaranteed analysis of that pet food label, and then assumptions on those ingredients. And I believe they look at, it's not the entire label.
Lara Moody (09:26):
No. They look at the ones that cover the, again, 95% of what's in that product. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (09:32):
Interesting. And so then what were some of the key findings?
Lara Moody (09:35):
Oh, so many interesting things within that report. When we look at sales, just volume and, and value of course, dogs are the largest animals they tend to eat the most. And let me say, clearly we're talking about dogs and cats when we're talking about pet food here in this report. And so just from a volume standpoint dog food, dry dog food in particular is the, the largest volume of the sale. And that represents about 55% of all the pet dog and cat food sales that are out there. And we're looking at wet, dry and pet and treats in the dog and cat food space.
Louise Calderwood (10:14):
So very clearly, we're not looking at supplements and we're not looking at things like dental chew Got it. And that sort of thing. Yep.
Scott Sorrell (10:21):
Yeah.
Lara Moody (10:22):
When you look at the value standpoint dog food still stays the top dry dog food, dry dog food. Cat food is the second largest by volume, dry cat food. And dog treats though are the second largest by value.
Scott Sorrell (10:39):
By value. And what percent is dry cat food?
Lara Moody (10:42):
Dry cat food sits at around 16%, 16 of the volume that sold dry dog treats are about 11%. When we start thinking about value dry dog food is about 38%. Treats are at 20%, and dry cat food is about 12%.
Scott Sorrell (11:04):
Okay. That, that's kind of striking. Right. dry dog foods at 55% on the volume basis, seeing that 38% on the value basis.
Lara Moody (11:12):
Well, I think one of the things that we're gonna see as we dive into some of the elements of the report is there has been you know, we start seeing shifts in ingredients when we move from the dry bulk sales into how fresh pets food gets calculated, how treats get ac accumulated in. And we're seeing a, a shift into more select or higher value ingredients in certain categories. And that kind of works itself out, I think, in those volumes or the values that we're looking at there.
Scott Sorrell (11:47):
So I had a, I have a recollection that, you know, during the COVID years, there was a shift towards some high products in foods, maybe that's correct or not. And then there was a bit of a, a, a, an entrenchment after that. And have we seen that kind of turnaround?
Louise Calderwood (12:04):
I, I'm gonna have to speak to or, or referred to a speaker we just saw this morning Yeah. Who looked at non veterinary spending per household on pets. And we have not seen that back off. Okay. Since the COVID days. Alright. When, when we look at your take out veterinary care but keep in all the other money you spend on your pets, and that number continues to creep up on a per household and on a percentage of household income both. Wow. So, you know, we, we are hearing things about reduction in pet numbers or reduction in pet spending, but I have to say, looking at this very macro piece, people still care about their pets and they are still buying the, the ingredients and the things that, that go into taking care of a pet. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (12:49):
Yeah. You know, you say people care, still care about their pets. Right. I, I'm kind of curious, Charles, are we caring more about our pets than maybe when I was a kid? And that was a long time ago, but, so, and, and if so, what's driving that?
Dr. Charlies Starkey (13:04):
You know what I, I, I can't speak for consumer perceptions, but growing up with a rural background, dogs were outside animals. Yeah. And, and cats too, for the most part. They were workers. They, they took care of the barn and, and, and stayed outside. We've seen over the years, a growing trend. You know, my, my big hound dogs, we have three, and they stay in the house at night. And, and so so I, I would've never done that before and, and my parents and their parents for sure would never have. So I think with that proximity and, and the relationships are a little different you know, there's well-published data on emotional support that pets give and, and benefits to mood and things like that. And so I I, I think we've just shifted culturally in our view of pets. And, and I would argue even as we see pet food production increase in some developing countries, previously had a, you know, almost none. Now you're seeing the pet ownership grow in, in Latin American countries and Asian countries, pet food production's increasing and it just has to do with cultural shifts. And you know, that the, the dog or the cat is a farm animal and an outside worker. Now they're, they become part of the family.
Scott Sorrell (14:26):
Yeah. That's interesting. I'm wondering about age demographics as well. Right. We've got the boomers, they're shuffling forward, got a younger generation. They're not having kids as young as the, you know, and maybe I'm kind of wondering, speaking, talking out loud is, is has the pets kind of taken the place of maybe children for some of these folks?
Louise Calderwood (14:45):
I, you know, I had a conversation just Sunday with friends of mine who chose not to have children, and they said, okay, we're, we're just gonna admit it. Yeah. We, the, the pets that, that's the spot they hold. But I, I would like to speak just a minute to the science of this as well. And that is that our understanding as a society age, demographic, whatever, aside, as a society, we understand the role of nutrition in long-term health. And nowadays, as with our own bodies we, we want our pets to not only live long, but to live very vigorous lives throughout their entire age. And we're understanding the value of nutrition in joint health, cognition digestive health, coat health. And certainly this report speaks to an understanding of the role. All of those individual ingredients play in not just the longevity of our animals, but the, the vigor as they age.
Scott Sorrell (15:41):
Yeah. You know, kind of a key point, maybe this is just me editorializing, but you know, it's obvious that our scientists understand the role of nutrition better, but I think there's also a layer to that where consumers are understanding nutrition because it's available to them. Right. Myself, I listen to three or four different human nutrition podcasts, which I'm sure that that links in to my understanding or least beliefs of what my animals nutrition should be about. So that, that's a, that's an interesting concept. Lara, coming back to you. So what are some other key elements that you wanna talk
Lara Moody (16:10):
About? Negotiation? Yes. So we're talking about ingredients. So when we look at the, all of the ingredients that are in it in, in the report the top five ingredients in the report are chicken and chicken products, followed by whole grains, milled grains, beef and beef products, and then marine based ingredients. And interestingly, the marine based ingredients, from a tonnage standpoint for chicken and chicken based products, it's about 2.2 million tons. So just to give you an idea of, of volume for marine based products, it's about 500,000 tons. So there's a big difference there. Big difference. But one of the most interesting things that's come out in this report is that from 2020 report release till 25 report release, we actually have doubled the amount of marine ingredients in, in, in the, in, in, in pet food. And so there, I think you're seeing that's where we have started to identify this trend of higher value, kind of more select ingredients coming into the pet food space.
Lara Moody (17:16):
And that marine based volume that's increasing is really being driven by salmon and cod, interestingly. And so that to me speaks a little bit to kind of the humanization of our pets and wanting our pets to eat the same types of proteins and things that we're eating. So that, so that's interesting. And then the breadth of ingredients that are used mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (18:15):
Yeah. So Luis if you might wouldn't mind talking a little bit about the diversity of some of the ingredients. I know that's a hot button for you. It
Louise Calderwood (18:23):
Is. It's something that, that really stood out to me in the report that was released in 2020 versus the one released this year. In 2020, we had less than 400 ingredients. Now that's still a whole lot of ingredients, but we had less than 400 ingredients that were on the list of ingredients that we looked at in this report. It's more than 600. Now. We have to remember, and this also speaks to the marine ingredients the data set in 2000, in the 2020 report is a different data set than in the 2025 report. Remember, we added the Amazon data, so we, we added a, a different base of data to this. But even with that aside, we are seeing a diversity in the ingredients. And it speaks to, as, as you mentioned, Scott, I think our ever increasing understanding as a society, as a consumer about the role of nutrition in animal health. We know that consumers want to feed their pets the way they feed themselves. Lara spoke to that. And that is also driving what we are seeing in the way of an ingredient spread. So some really interesting things on not the science and the culture of nutrition of our pets and how that's driven the, the diversity of the ingredients.
Scott Sorrell (19:42):
I'm kind of curious, do you see a difference in the ingredients from the Nielsen data as opposed to the Amazon data? And is that reflective of perhaps the demographics of the people that are buying at stores versus online? I'm just, do you have any ideas or thoughts around that?
Lara Moody (19:56):
I would say we didn't parse the data that way. And so I can't, we, we wouldn't be able to speak to that element of it. Yeah. But we do make the assumption that some, some of the online sales, you know, not, we haven't scientifically looked at the data this way, but there's probably an assumption that some of the online sales are people going after specific Right. Elements, rather than just the bulk
Louise Calderwood (20:18):
44
Lara Moody (20:18):
Pound bag
Louise Calderwood (20:19):
Of dog food that I used to buy. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (20:22):
Very well, Charles. Luis said that there is 600 ingredients in this report. So up from about 400, I'm sure some of those are rendered products. Things that kind of fall into your bailiwick. Well,
Dr. Charlies Starkey (20:36):
They are, and, but it, it, to her point, it's amazing the diversity and, and I think some of it Louise brought up how we're getting more educated in nutrition. You know, not, not every dog's the same. We have tiny dogs. We have dogs that go up over a hundred, 200 pounds, and so they have different nutritional needs for longevity. The marine product increase is very interesting. And I think a lot of that goes to supply and omega threes as we've learned more about their benefit and nutrition for dogs. A lot of the salmon, and, you know, I, I think it's, some of it is the consumers want the dog food to look like their food, but some of it's really the, the strides and nutrition. So blueberries and, and peas and sweet potatoes different ingredients that can be brought in to supplement traditional protein sources like rendered products.
Dr. Charlies Starkey (21:33):
And even in the rendered products area and the, the processed meats area, we've seen a shift from the previous report to the new report. We're seeing more fresh type chicken and, and fresh type beef products than we saw previously with a slight reduction in rendered products. And some of that is because we're able to capture those fresh meat products easier and, and not as much tonnage is going to rendering to some extent. So there's, there's been a shift in that, and it was really interesting to see. And the marine products was really impressive how it had changed so much over the years.
Scott Sorrell (22:12):
Yeah. I'm kind of curious what is the consumer's perception of co-products and those use in foods and how they appear on the label, those kinds of things. Did, was any of that discussed in this report? Or is that,
Lara Moody (22:27):
So the one thing we looked at that we hadn't previously looked at is the amount of what we kind of call upcycled ingredients. Got it. Right. So when we think about co-products and pie byproducts, those are all materials that have been upcycled from some other industries waste, if you will. Right. It's either something that was generated as a co-product with the processing of something else, or it's a complete byproduct that comes as a part of a animal processing. And in that space, upcycled materials is how we think about that. And so, cat food is about 51% upcycled ingredients, and dog food is about 49% upcycled ingredients. So they're about a 50% of ingredients that are being used or being upcycled. And I think important to think like that upcycling is not just in the the grain space, the milled and whole grain space. It's not just in the protein space. It's also, you know, tomato peel that didn't get used with the ketchup making process. Right. So there's lots of things that could be considered upcycled in the pet food space.
Scott Sorrell (23:32):
Yeah. And, and then how does the consumer perceive this? Is it changing? Do we know, may
Louise Calderwood (23:37):
I, may I speak to that first and then, and then I'm certain you have a lot of, a lot of thoughts about this as well. Absolutely. to me, the underlying important piece is having the wholesome quality products appropriate for the animal. And those of us that you're sitting here chatting with today, we understand the role of co-products Yeah. Upcycled products in providing wholesome quality products of the appropriate nutrition to animals. Right. It may not be something that we choose to eat as a human being, but from, for an animal, not only is it safe and nutritious, it meets their nutrient needs. Yeah. And that is something that we work very hard to, to bring that perception through to consumers. These are not cast off products. The standards for purchasing of these products for a pet food manufacturer are stringent, are tight. They, they need to meet very specific standards before they go into a pet food. Yeah. And if, and that's something that we're, I think all of us are continuing to work with our consumers. And not only that, I'm certain Lara will speak to it is the sustainability role that these products play.
Dr. Charlies Starkey (24:49):
Yeah. And it's just, I mean, we, we have a goal, you know, to reduce food waste in this country by a tremendous amount. And every product, whether it's plant or animal, typically is manufacture processed to supply for another use, typically human food. Or in the case of soybeans, we're, we're trying to get the soybean oil, which has food uses as well as others. And that soybean meal needs to be utilized. And instead of use using it at a lower value rate, where it's not benefiting things as well, we can incorporate, it's very high in protein, great for amino acid nutrition, and we incorporate, and that's really how the whole feed industry over several decades was built, was utilizing these co-products both from plant and animal processing. I, I don't like liver. I some people do. I, it's not my preference.
Dr. Charlies Starkey (25:47):
So a lot of the products from animal processing, we have chosen not to eat or place on our menu. And so liver is highly nutritious, tons of b vitamins, minerals fat soluble vitamins. It can go into a formula for pet food and supply a whole lot of nutrients and help compliment other things. And even tomato peel brings lycopene in the diet, which is an oxidant good for eyesight good for, for other things. So we're, as we're learning this nutrition and the needs, physiological needs of the animals, both cats and dogs, we're trying to formulate these diets to supply those. And every pet food that's made is required to be full, complete diet. That's all that animal gets to eat. You know, you may supplement some treats or, or things like that. But the every dog food is made at very high standards for safety and to supply the complete nutrition for that animal because that's probably all it's going to consume for the entirety of its life. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (26:55):
Makes total sense.
Lara Moody (26:55):
And I think relative to the sustainability standpoint that Louise mentioned, I was just at the pet food essentials discussion yesterday, and it was focused on sustainability and footprinting essentially what we would call lifecycle assessments of, of pet food ingredients. And when you think about the different ingredients that are used in pet food, you know, those upcycled ingredients have a leg up in the, their footprint because they are materials that are coming from you know, as byproducts or co-products of other industries. And if you're using something that was just produced purely as a whole grain that's going as a whole grain into the food or fresh chicken that's going directly in, it's gonna have a bigger footprint than the waste co-product or byproduct that comes as a result, you know, comes, comes with it. And so from a sustainability standpoint, if we're thinking about the water footprint or the carbon footprint as people think about or even the land use footprint, then upcycled ingredients have a real leg up in being able to reduce the footprint of those products.
Lara Moody (28:00):
And I think the, the note yesterday from the speaker that represented the PET Sustainability coalition she, you know, indicated that something like 75% of consumers are, are aware and wanna pay attention to climate change. And over 50% of those folks are interested in potentially buying products from companies that from pet food companies that make appropriate actions relative to the environment. And so I think, again, it's listening to the consumer and what the consumer wants. The consumer probably doesn't fully understand the difference between humanizing their pet and having an environmental footprint. But as they start to pay more attention to that, you know, they may have to make decisions based on that.
Scott Sorrell (28:44):
And so where are they gonna get this information, right? Because Right. This panel understands the importance of upcycle ingredients. Right. I'm gonna guess that the, our, our consumers do not. And so is it incumbent upon,
Lara Moody (28:56):
Well, I think part of the work that we do at I feeder you know, one of the reasons we generate this I feeder is the kind of the driver for bringing folks together to generate this report. We don't do policy. We do some outreach, but we don't do policy A FIA does policy, NARA does policy PFI does policy collectively with this report, we have a whole set of social media graphics. We have videos on it or a webinar that people can watch. We have the report itself, people can download. I know that A FIA and NARA will be integrating the findings from this report into their policy advocacy that they do, and into many different communications forms that they'll use in the next couple years. So I think we do have a role in communicating to the public the value of these things. And it's one of the reasons that I think that these organizations have supported the work th feeder, so that we can like, have these data points to be able to communicate.
Scott Sorrell (29:49):
Yeah. Makes sense. Any key points from the presentation that we haven't covered yet?
Lara Moody (29:55):
Well, one of the most interesting elements in the report, I think is the look at the value that the pet food industry brings to the overall economy. One of the things that the report does is one, you know, essentially we are purchasing I, we, being the pet food manufacturers are purchasing 9.8 million tons of ingredients that we're bringing into the space to make pet food. And that's about $13.2 billion worth of ingredients that are being purchased. That represents about $52 billion in sales, right. To the consumer of product. That's great to look at that. But we can go further upstream and look at the value, the broader value to the agricultural economy. So, you know, if we're gonna be purchasing corn, or we're gonna be purchasing or purchasing an ingredient that came from a slaughtered beef animal, like there were elements that went into the production of that beef animal.
Lara Moody (31:00):
And so when we look further upstream for the ag economy, we look at like the fertilizer that was sold to the fertilizer supplier so they could sell it to the farmer to grow the corn that fed the beef cattle that right. And so this report does all of that upstream look. And so when we look at the ingredients that were purchased to come into the farm supply, that's about seven and a half billion dollars worth of ingredients. And then those ingredients were then in turn told to sold to farmers. So farmers purchased those for about $10 billion worth, and all that went into the 13.2 billion of products that the pet manufacturers created. So I think people don't realize the impact, right, that pet food has on the economy. We have pet food manufacturers in over 40, in, in 43 states. Those states are purchasing ingredients, right. That's produced within them, the top states. As far as purchasers, like who's purchasing the most ingredients would be Missouri Iowa let's see Kansas Pennsylvania and California. And so when you think about some of those states, those are pretty big ag states, right? Yeah. That are generating products that are coming in, and each of those states are selling over $700 million worth of ingredients to the pet food manufacturing.
Scott Sorrell (32:24):
So where's most of these ingredients coming from? I'm gonna assume most are domestic, but do we have many imports?
Lara Moody (32:30):
We can't necessarily draw from the report where the ingredients are coming from, from a import standpoint, I can tell you that the report does look at imported products because if products were imported into a brick and mortar store imported into the sales, the Amazon for online sales, we do capture those imports. But we don't quantify what ingredients coming in were imported versus those that were domestic. And I don't know if my colleagues have thoughts on import or export of ingredients for the pet food space. Yeah.
Louise Calderwood (32:59):
It's, it's not in this report, but we were just recently, we were able to hear an economist speak and he was talking about tariffs. So he did have some information on ingredients coming into pet foods. And the indication is that it's a very small percentage of ingredients. We know we import vitamins and amino acids and minerals. Certainly the marine products we're, we're, we're fairly confident that those, a fair number of those were imported. But as a total percentage of the volume, it's not a large percentage of pet food.
Scott Sorrell (33:30):
So I guess then my follow-up question was gonna be the impact of, of, of these tariffs. And my guess is maybe not a lot then basis that
Louise Calderwood (33:40):
With pet food, we do have a fairly strong export market Okay. Of manufactured pet food. So there is a possibility there. But as far as what we are importing either as a manufactured pet food or the ingredients, that's fairly minimal. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (33:59):
Alright. Well, listen what I'd like to do now is we kind of get ready to wrap up, is have each of you to kind of give us a couple key takeaways that the audience ought to take from this conversation or the presentation, Lara, that you're gonna give later today. And, and Charles, if you wouldn't mind, can I start with you?
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Dr. Charlies Starkey (35:56):
Sure. I I think the, one of the things that went into the pet food report is there's a lot of additional language. There's great graphics and numbers and charts explaining the data, but there's a lot of good information explaining how it was developed. Very, very scientific way over my head, information on the analysis, but also explanations of what the data means to the lay person and, and this whole team. And, and, and PFI worked with the, the analysts to develop some of that language. And so I think it's a great tool for education. You know, they can download it from the Eye Feeder website for, you know, so consumers it part of, part of eye feeder's initiative. And, and I'm also director of fats and Proteins Research Council, which is the, the research arm of NARA is to educate and, and get, get information like this out there to consumers. So I think there's a lot of information here. I can't, I can't interpret a lot of the methodology, but the explanations on what the data means were, were really well done. And so I think from a consumer education standpoint and an industry education standpoint, there's a lot of good information in it overall.
Scott Sorrell (37:15):
Yeah. Excellent comments, Louise.
Louise Calderwood (37:18):
Sure. my takeaway from the report is the diversity of the ingredients to meet the diverse needs of our animals and the diverse choices of consumers anywhere, as I said, from the 44 pound bag of kibble that my dog ate, to someone who might buy their, their dog's kibble in two pound bags. And it, it's wonderful that we can meet that diversity with the broad way of ingredients that are, that are wholesome, nutritious, and appropriate for the pets.
Scott Sorrell (37:45):
Yeah. Great comment. Lara, why don't you just tell us what the website is? Charles said you can download the report Yeah. From the if feeder website. What is that?
Lara Moody (37:53):
Absolutely. Anybody can get the whole report. It's available@iffeeder.org, ifeeder.org on that free report website, free report. You can download it you can download the full report, you can download the graphics. There's a place if you're interested in looking at maybe just your state's economic impact or you wanna look at the impact of a particular ingredient, there's a great feature in there that lets you create your own graphs and charts with all of the data. So it's a, it is an easy, easy place to go and get information. One thing that I've encouraged especially for folks that are listening that are within the industry and maybe you are making presentations it's a great way to add color and a little context to your presentation. So all of the graphics are easy to grab. They are really bright and colorful and you know, you can add a, a key point to the state you're talking in or to the group that you're talking about with, with that data set.
Lara Moody (38:48):
So i feeder.org. great place to get it. And I would add one more thing 'cause I would be remiss, I am the executive director of a charity nonprofit foundation. All the work that we do is funded either from contributions from stakeholders that we partner with or from grants and contracts that we get, or grants and awards that we get. And so if anybody, if people are appreciative of the work we're doing or you're interested in supporting any of the work we are doing I'd love for folks to reach out to me. You can look@ifeeder.org to see how can contribute. Well,
Scott Sorrell (39:22):
Alright. I was gonna ask that as well. Or should they just con connect with you directly your connect with me email
Lara Moody (39:27):
Address feed? Yep. My email, I'll just tell it now. It's fine. It's lMoody@aia.org. Easy to find. There's also ways to reach me through the website. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (39:37):
Perfect. And then any key takeaways for you from the presentation?
Lara Moody (39:42):
I mean, to me, one of the interesting pieces of the, the, the work that we started to touch on but didn't go all the way to is when we look, we talked about the volume right. Of the products and how chicken and beef and mill products and marine based ingredients were the, the largest from a volume standpoint. But then when you start to look at it from a value standpoint, even though marine ingredients are not a huge piece, they have doubled in volume since the last report and they are one of the most expensive ingredients that we're using in pet food. So to me the takeaway from me is five years from now when we do this report, again, especially given, you know, maybe where we are from an economic standpoint, now what's the data gonna look like four or five years from now, right?
Lara Moody (40:29):
Is our marine based ingredients still gonna be doubling in size? Are we gonna see a shift back towards maybe some lower valued ingredients or cost? Ingredients? Are we, is sustainability going to be a trend that people pay more attention to and it's gonna have an impact on the ingredients? So to me, now that I've seen the past report and then seen the data from this report, I'm like, well, I'm ready for the next report. Right. Yeah. Interesting. So I think it'll be interesting to keep doing this report so we can keep tracking the trends and then tying it back to what's going on in the current situation.
Scott Sorrell (41:02):
So any predictions on what those future reports gonna look like? You're not gonna go there, I don't blame you, Lara
Lara Moody (41:09):
Said, said, said the economist that spoke this morning when I signed up for this in November, I thought, oh, this is gonna be pretty boring. There's not much gonna be talking about here. Well boy did that change. So no, I'm not making any predictions about four or five years
Scott Sorrell (41:24):
From now. Fair enough, fair enough. Won't put you on the spot. Alright, listen, thank you for joining us. This has been an interesting conversation and enjoyable conversation. Charles. Thank you. Great co-host Louise. Lara, thank you very much. Appreciate your expertise To our loyal listeners as always, thank you for coming along with us on this journey. I hope you learned something. I hope you had some fun and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends. We'd
Moderator (41:49):
Love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email @anh.marketing at balchem.com with any suggestions and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing at balchem.com. Balchem's real science lecture series of webinars takes place on the first Tuesday of every month with the top research and nutrition topics that will impact your business. We also include small ruminant, monogastric, and companion animal focused topics throughout the year. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the upcoming topics and to register for future webinars. You can also access past webinars and search for the topics most important to you.