Additional funding included in package of appropriations bills
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a “minibus” package of funding that includes an amendment that dedicates US$8 million to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) to expedite reviews for new feed ingredients.
The bipartisan amendment, co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Baird (R-Indiana) and others, was part of the fiscal 2023 package of six appropriations bills. The American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) has been seeking additional funding for CVM for quite some time.
“We’ve got ingredients that we come up with in the U.S., it takes forever to get them to market, it takes forever for FDA to get them approved. A lot of the ingredients, CVM regulates them as drugs when they’re just really feed additives, and so we need to get some of that language changed so that we can get them approved a little bit faster,” said Gary Huddleston, AFIA’s director of feed manufacturing and regulatory affairs, speaking in September 2021 at AFIA’s Liquid Feed Symposium.
According to AFIA, on average, studies have shown that it takes companies three to five years to get new ingredients through the FDA’s rigorous review process, which prevents innovation from making it to farmers and ranchers in a timely way.
AFIA’s President and CEO Constance Cullman praised the bill’s passage.
“Rep. Baird said it best when he shared that it is important for the United States to have a regulatory framework that offers a timely and predictable path to the marketplace for feed ingredients and that can keep pace with the evolving science of animal nutrition. The additional FDA funding for feed ingredient reviews in the House-passed spending bill is a huge win for the U.S. feed industry, putting us more on par with other countries that continue to move forward with safe ingredients to enhance the safety, quality, environmental impact and nutrition of feed and pet food,” she said.
