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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life

Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life
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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life - 1

Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life By Yarina Gao, China [Abstract] Same as human being food, pet food conforms to strict standards to ensure the safety of pets. Pet food must keep their original flavor and nutrition during maintenance, transportation and shelf life, which rely heavily on the pet food packages. In the keen competitions, prolonging pet food shelf life attracts more and more manufacturers and suppliers attentions. In this article, I will talk about the factors that affect pet food shelf life and related solutions to prolong shelf life in terms of pet food packaging. [Keywords] Pet Food, Food Packaging, Shelf Life, Affecting Factors, Solutions Pet food has been one of keen competitive industries along with countless new pet foods introduced into the market. Same as human being food, pet food should conform to strict standards to ensure pet safety and health. In America, pet food is supervised by AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials), USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and FTC (Federal Trade Community). AAFCO establishes the nutritional standards for complete and balanced pet foods, and it is the pet food company's responsibility to formulate and maintain their products according to the appropriate AAFCO standard. In many countries, like China, there aren’t special regulations or standards related to pet food quality control, so they usually also apply to AAFCO standards. Like human being food, pet food also has a certain shelf life. Manufacturers and suppliers must ensure the pet food won’t be stale or lost nutrition during the shelf life. To enhance and keep the competitions, more and more manufacturers are trying to have a full consideration on factors affecting shelf life, in order to prolong their products shelf life Factors Affecting Shelf Life Many factors affect pet food shelf life, like additives (preservatives), packages, maintenance environment (temperature, lights). Maintenance environment, which is the conditions during the pet food delivery and maintenance, is a human factor and can be controlled by us. Preservatives can also affect pet food shelf life. Basically, pet food added with artificial preservatives has as longer as months shelf life than those with natural preservatives. But artificial preservatives can change the original taste of food and perhaps release some toxic substance. Therefore, there are very strict restrictions on preservatives usage. Complying with AAFCO, pet food must have primary nutrition including protein (more than 18%), fat and additional nutrition like amino acids, mineral substance, crude fiber, calcium, iron, vitamins and so on. All these nutrition aims to ensure the necessities of pet growth, living and make their fur sleek. Meanwhile, it also provides a good medium for growth of microorganisms. These

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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life - 2

microorganisms can reduce protein to organic amines and mercaptans, which stink and decay pet food, reduce fat to smelly ketone and aldehyde and other spoilage substance. All these low molecular will not only change the taste of pet food, but also make protein and fact lost their nutrition. Therefore, it is essentially important to restrain microorganisms no matter on production lines or shelves. As we all know, growth and living of microorganisms need proper environment. The most three important factors are temperature, oxygen and water. Oxygen is primary factor that cause food decay. The...

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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life - 3

plastic films. It should not be too high, which results in worse consumer experiences or too low, which results in packages opening during the transportation or maintenance. II. Permeability of Packaging Materials Permeability is a measure of the ability of a barrier material to allow gases (O2, N2, CO2 and water vapor etc.) to permeate through it in a specific time. It usually depends on the type of material, pressure, temperature and thickness of materials. During pet food shelf life, oxygen and water vapor in the packages should maintain the prefilled volumes, which reply heavily on pet...

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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life - 4

OTR and WVTR test results of these 7 packaging materials as follow: Table 1 Test Data of Pet Food Packaging Permeability Analyzing the test results of these 7 kinds of packaging materials, we can find that materials laminated with different layers can have a significant difference in oxygen permeability. From Table 1, aluminum-plastic materials, BOPET/VMPET/LDPE, PET/CPP has a relative lower oxygen transmission rate (better oxygen barrier property). According to our research, pet food with these kinds of packaging usually has longer shelf life0 Oxygen Transmission Rate Laminated films have...

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Factors Affecting Pet Food Shelf Life - 5

Water Vapor Transmission Rate According to the tests we conducted in Labthink laboratory, choosing proper packaging for pet food is helpful in prolonging pet food shelf life, decreasing the addition of preservatives, saving production cost as well as pet health. Therefore, we have advices for manufacturers and suppliers of pet food packaging as follows: ■S Choose laminated plastic, aluminum-plastic materials and metal materials as pet food packages, because all these materials have a good barrier properties to oxygen and water vapor. Besides consideration of oxygen and water vapor...

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