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RESPONSIBLE FEED INGREDIENTS DOCUMENTS PASSED BY THE ICCF
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by Rebecca Sherratt, Features Editor, Milling and Grain
he International Cooperation for Convergence of Technical Requirements for the Assessment of Feed Ingredients (ICCF) has recently published new guidance documents to ensure the continued and improved fair trade of sustainable and responsible feed ingredients. The aim of these new documents is to also ensure that feed ingredient suppliers can also facilitate the growing demand for more and more animal products being produced globally. The two documents were endorsed on March 14th in Bangkok, Thailand. The ICCF Steering Committee announced their pleasure to pass these documents, entitled ‘Stability Testing of Feed Ingredients’ and ‘Sub-Chronic Oral Toxicity Testing in Laboratory Animals’. After an initial drafting of the documents by experts from the authorities and the industry and a two-month public consultation ending end of January this year, it took two months for these documents to be finalised and approved. During the public consultation, comments were supplied by various stakeholders of the feed industry, ranging from academics and regulators, to ensure that these documents best reflect the most sensible, suitable and achievable goals for everybody involved in the industry.
Document one: Stability Testing of Feed Ingredients
The first document passed, entitled ‘The Stability Testing of Feed Ingredients’ is available to view online for free at the ICCF website. Several topics are discussed in the document, such as a clear explanation of the objective of stability testing of feed ingredients and general principles for properly design a stability study. It also provides more details on assessing different types of feed ingredients. Should a feed ingredient contain more than one active substance, stability should be assessed individually for each active substance. The stability of a feed ingredient should be tested all along the feed chain, using recognised and validated analytical methods. This document provides recommendations on how to assess the stability of a feed ingredient as produced, in premixtures, in feeds and in animal drinking water. The testing conditions should 80 | June 2019 - Milling and Grain