USDA FoodData Central petfood use

USDA FoodData Central (FDC, fdc.nal.usda.gov) provides ingredient composition data that pet food formulators consult, with documented limitations for rendered pet-food ingredients. The project's FDC dataset (pdf-parsed/usda_fdc_petfood_ingredients_20260718.json, collected 2026-07-18 via the public FDC portal, values cross-verified against the official Foundation Foods CSV release 2026-04-30) queried 77 common pet-food ingredients across FDC's SR Legacy, Foundation and Branded data types: 60 matched a usable entry, while 17 returned no match precisely because FDC is a human-food database and typical rendered/processed pet-food ingredients are not covered — chicken meal, chicken by-product meal, poultry by-product meal, meat and bone meal, lamb meal, turkey meal, fish meal and similar dry-rendered meals fall in this gap (the closest FDC candidates are unrelated human foods, e.g. "Cracker, meal"). Where entries exist (grains, oilseeds, whole foods), values describe human-food forms (raw or cooked) with very different moisture and fat profiles from rendered meals. Practical consequence: formulators use FDC for generic whole-food ingredients and rely on NRC 2006 requirement tables, AAFCO profiles and supplier assays for rendered meals; note the correct organization name is AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials), not "AFZ", and FDC's own published dataset sizes should be cited from fdc.nal.usda.gov rather than estimated.