American Feed Industry Association

The American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) is a lobbying organization "representing the business, legislative and regulatory interests of the animal feed and pet food industries and their suppliers."

Overview
According to AFIA's website, member organizations include 690 member companies representing almost 75% of commercial feed and pet food sold annually in the United States. Members include:


 * "manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, animal health companies, equipment manufacturers, large integrated livestock and poultry producers, and firms providing other goods and services to the commercial animal food industry. In addition, AFIA is also proud to count more than 35 state, regional, national and international associations among its membership." AFIA supports and shares resources with the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), according to the latter's 2004 annual IRS return. It shares the same office address as AAA.

Food disparagement laws
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber report in their book Mad Cow USA that AFIA was the primary organization behind drafting the "food disparagement laws" that were lobbied into law with the support of the American Farm Bureau Federation and other groups in the 1990s. On April 16, 1996, Oprah Winfrey was sued for the Texas crime of food disparagement when she aired a program warning of mad cow risks in the United States. 

Factory farming
On the average, Americans eat approximately 8 ounces of meat per day (about twice the global average). The United States slaughters approximately 15% of the world's total (for 5% of the world's population). However, global demand has also multiplied in recent years due to rising affluence and Confined animal Feeding Operations (CAFO)s or factory farms. These "animal factories" consume vast amounts of energy, generate pollution and environmental damage. They require increasing amounts of corn, soy and grains which has led to wide spread destruction of rain forests. Organizations that support CAFO's include the American Feed Industry Association. See also meat & dairy industry, sections 3 through 5.

Waste products fed to farm animals
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally banned the practice of feeding cow meat and bone meal back to cows in 1997 (after the Mad cow disease epidemic in Great Britain). However, dried poultry waste and sewage sludge are routinely fed to cattle. Pigs and chickens are still routinely fed the bones, brains, meat scraps, feathers, and feces of their own species. Furthermore, tens of millions of shelter animals are also picked up by rendering plants. Thus commercial meat, dairy, and egg products often come from animals whose diet included the ground up remains of cats and dogs, including the euthanasia drugs injected into their bodies. 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes (blood, bone, viscera) and euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed. Moreover, the FDA has been using inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable data to track and oversee feed ban compliance. ,

Mad cow disease
In 1996, in response to the revelation that young people in Britain were dying from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of Mad cow disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued seven recommendations. Numbers 5-7 were recommendations for further research and 1-4 were concrete recommendations. The United States continues to violate all four guide lines; number one being to stop feeding animals to other other. See also World Health Organization, section 7.

Lobbying & public relations
In the fiscal year ending in 2008, AFIH paid $80,000 to Policy Directions Inc.

Contact details
AFIA 1501 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209 E-mail: afia AT afia.org Phone: (703) 524-0810 Fax:(703) 524-1921.

Web: http://www.afia.org/

SourceWatch articles

 * Mad cow disease
 * Meat & Dairy industry
 * Policy Directions Inc.
 * Processed food industry
 * U.S. Government's War on Animals
 * War on Animals

External articles

 * Expert Panel Says Stop Feeding Pig & Chicken Slaughterhouse Waste to Cows: Ban Urged on All Animal Protein for Cattle, New York Times, Seattle Times, February 2004
 * Michael Greger, M.D. USDA Misleading American Public about Beef Safety, Organic Consumers Association, December 2003
 * Mad Cow Disease: Improvements in the Animal Feed Ban and Other Regulatory Areas Would Strengthen U.S. Prevention Efforts., GAO Congressional Report, U.S. General Accounting Office, January 2002
 * Sandra Blakeslee Makers of US feed fail to heed rules on mad cow disease, New York Times, January 2001
 * Michael Satchell, Stephen J. Hedges, Linda Kulman The Next Bad Beef Scandal?, U.S. News & World Report, August 1997