ISSUE FOCUS 32 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2023 With the increasing adoption of technologies such as NIRs and nutritional value prediction platforms, quality and formulation have never been more relevant to each other within the feed and food industry. Working together to increase the value of raw materials and reduce production costs, formulation and quality can bring a huge impact to the companies' results. The enormous importance of quality control in feed production is undeniable for the success and profitability of any operation. Few are the most critical factors that impact the consistency of finished products and, consequently, adequate animal nutrition. Among so many responsibilities within a feed factory, the analytical work will obtain the results and quantitative values of the nutritional components of the food used and the feed produced. This will ensure that guaranteed analysis is always delivered and met. Needless to say that quality management within the feed industry goes far beyond the analysis of ingredients and finished products: it involves sanitary controls, regulatory compliance, cleaning and sanitizing facilities, water potability, maintenance and calibration of equipment, and much more. However, isolating its importance to help nutritionists and formulators, quality management has a great responsibility to ensure greater consistency of the raw material used and the manufactured products, enabling companies to adopt better supplier qualification strategies and have complete statistics that enable better variability analysis to definite the values to be used in the feed formulation. THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPER FEED FORMULATION An adequate formulation is one that meets the nutritional needs of the animal according to its physiological stage, representing the ideal quantitative balance between nutrients - such as the correct relationship between lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, among others. In the industrial context, feed and food formulation can also consider raw material costs and availability so that the appropriate formulation delivers to the company the mix that represents the lowest possible cost. This approach allows companies to achieve higher margins, reduced costs and a more agile process to create or adapt recipes for new products on the market with greater accuracy and speed. The starting point for developing an animal feed formulation is to characterize the animal specifications, defining the feed objective, category and the MINDING THE GAP BETWEEN QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND FEED FORMULATION Ricardo Amaral Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Optimal Tecnologias
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