AAFCO

AAFCO is the Association of American Feed Control Officials, a US non-government body whose members are the state and federal officials charged with regulating animal feed and pet food. It is not a government agency and, contrary to a widespread assumption, it neither tests, certifies, nor approves any product. What it does is produce model regulations, ingredient definitions, and nutrient profiles that individual US states then choose to adopt into their own feed laws, which is why an AAFCO statement carries real weight on a North American label even though AAFCO has no direct enforcement power of its own. For premium dog and cat food, the practical relevance is concentrated in two places: the AAFCO Nutrient Profiles, which set minimum (and some maximum) levels for a [complete food](/glossary/complete-food) by [life stage](/glossary/life-stage), and the wording of the [nutritional adequacy statement](/glossary/nutritional-adequacy-statement) that tells you whether a recipe was substantiated by formulation or by a [feeding trial](/glossary/feeding-trial). A useful point for international readers: AAFCO is the US counterpart to the European reference framework, where [FEDIAF](/glossary/fediaf) publishes the comparable guidelines, so a brand sold on both sides of the Atlantic often formulates to whichever standard is stricter on a given nutrient. Because AAFCO is a US body, its terminology uses US spelling, so a label will say crude fiber and crude fat rather than the UK crude fibre. For more on how these terms fit together, see the [Petipedia glossary](/glossary).

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