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The AAFCO 2017 Midyear Meeting (Mobile, AL, January 2017) produced a significant batch of pet-food-relevant ingredient terminology updates. Three top-of-stack items, all adopted during this meeting:
- Human Grade (new Official Feed Term) — adopted via IDC
recommendation; definition reads: "Every ingredient and the resulting product are stored, handled, processed, and transported in a manner that is consistent and compliant with regulations for current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) for human edible foods as specified in 21 CFR Part 117." Publication was sequenced to follow the natural claims guideline (Pet Food Committee explicitly conditioned publication on prior Human Grade acceptance). The Human Grade Working Group was disbanded immediately after adoption (moved by Charlotte Conway / FDA-CVM; seconded George Ferguson / NC).
- Tracer (new Official Feed Term) — new definition: "A harmless
substance present at insignificant levels in an animal food to assure the presence of and thorough mixing of a component (ingredient / premix) of that food." Establishes the regulatory basis for marker substances used in homogenization verification.
- Feed(s) / Animal Food FSMA harmonization — new Official Feed Term
"Animal Food" recommended; caveat: Specialty Pet Food intentionally excluded because FSMA itself does not cover specialty pets.
Eleven tentative definitions were moved to Official, including T6.17 L-Methionine, T54.33 Bovine Colostrum, T54.34 Dried Bovine Colostrum, T57.165 Zinc Hydroxychloride, T71.30 Mustard Meal Solvent Extracted, T73.300/301 Sodium/Potassium Salts of Fatty Acids, T87.29 Yucca schidigera extract, T93.9 Wheat Gluten, T96.13 Molasses Hydrolyzed Yeast, and T27.9 Deoiled corn distillers dried grains with solubles. New tentatives: T6.12 Taurine extended to "fish" use (FDA-CVM clarified shrimp excluded), T33.25 Stearic Acid, T33.26 Palmitic Acid, T73.400 Iron Nickel Tracer, 73.026 Feed Grade Sodium Formate.
Source: AAFCO 2017 Midyear Committee Reports (PDF hosted at https://www.aafco.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2017_Midyear_Committee_Reports_book_with_cover.pdf) retrieved via Tavily Extract 2026-07-19. Direct curl from this host times out; verification pending via pdftotext -tsv once alternative fetch path is set up.