Veterinarians Should Know How Pet Food is Made and Its Innovations

Our pets, or patients, eat daily; if they don't, families and vets may worry and feel sad. From my perspective, I believe we should be informed about the manufacturing process, raw materials, manufacturers, quality, and innovation.
 

Diet is a clinical tool, not an accessory. Our knowledge of pet physiology and disease behavior allows us to make diets the key to maintaining a pet's health or even to provide special treatment, which is necessary to maintain a patient's quality of life.
 

Nowadays, innovation ensures process optimization, resulting in more complete and functional ingredients. Besides nourishing and meeting energetic requirements, they promote comprehensive health from naturally combining nutritious and 'pharmacological or medicinal' actions.
 

Besides providing better and more natural alternatives, innovation allows understanding which ingredients are not appropriate or secure, so they must be removed from formulations. By knowing more and being involved in this topic, we have the tools to choose between attractive marketing offers and real quality food.
 

More publisher content

Technology Can Be Useful, But Can It Replace Us?

Candela Bonaura

Modern plants automate the process from the raw materials selection to final bagging and palletizing. In this way, human errors are reduced, and production speed is increased. Sensors measure critical parameters, such as moisture, temperature, density, and drying conditions, among others. Instead, AI and automatic learning allow for formula optimization, anticipation, and correction. In quality control, many companies are already employing automated inspection (e.g., computer vision, sensors) to identify faults, pollution, or size, density, and texture inconsistency. Digitalization follows each batch—from raw materials input to the final product—enhancing traceability and minimizing product recalls or complaints. It also ensures quality and food safety standards, which are crucial to avoiding contamination, nutritional variability, or production failures.
 

What do these processes allow:
 

• Better quality testing of the prescribed or recommended food.
• Understanding how 'secure' a commercial food can be.
• Knowing changes within the industry to be updated with personalized or specialized food.
• Offering treatment and diagnosis, with improved capacity to prescribe therapeutic diets, recommending high-quality and specific food.
• Addressing the management of chronic diseases with food as the primary treatment for obesity, gastrointestinal, and dermatological diseases.
• Advising tutors on food quality, trends, and science. Also teaching about the importance of nutrition.
• Preventing diseases in the future by promoting appropriate diets since they are puppies.
  
  

Summary

These changes are of great interest to vets as the digitalization of pet food directly impacts the quality, security, and reliability of the food we recommend.
 

Don't hesitate to reach out to attend courses in nutrition, food, and more.

By Dr. M. Candela Bonaura
Source: All Pet Food Magazine