Smarter Software Tools for Safer Feed

Progressus
Jan 27
4 min read

Quality control is essential for feed manufacturers striving to ensure ingredients and finished products meet expectations and deliver consistent performance. Good specification design, continuous feedback, and effective formulation software all play critical roles in minimizing risks—from poor performance and animal harm to reputational damage and lost profitability.

In this article, Ian Mealey, Product Marketing for Formulation at Datacor Inc, discusses how modern formulation tools, alongside strong quality programs, can deliver measurable quality improvements, increase responsiveness to market changes, and reduce the likelihood of costly errors.

Why Quality Control Matters

If something goes wrong in feed production, the consequences are immediate and significant. Poor quality or incorrectly formulated products can reduce performance at the farm and, in extreme cases, cause harm to animals. These issues can also trigger substantial costs, including the cost of recovery and disposal of product, remediation at the production site, and compensation to customers.

Typically, quality control programs address different aspects of feed production, including:

Working closely with suppliers and testing incoming ingredients to ensure they meet expected quality
Conducting thorough checks throughout the production process to confirm systems are operating correctly
Ensuring finished product matches the intended formula and packaging declaration

Formulation also plays a central role. Since feed represents the largest cost in any animal production system, formulation tools are vital to help manufacturers design products that meet required quality in the most cost-effective way and maintain that balance as circumstances change. Using formulation tools, manufacturers determine which ingredients to use, how each product uses them, the required quantities, and the nutritional value they provide.

Achieving consistent quality is challenging because of variability in ingredient costs, quality, supply, and production processes. Regulations, a competitive market, animal health and food safety and sustainability all add to the challenge.

Reducing Risk Through Better Formulation

Reformulation is an ongoing process driven by updates to ingredient analyses, costs, and availability. An existing formula may change significantly once the latest ingredient information is accounted for. A complete review or a reformulation may be necessary, especially when situations such as raw material shortages also come into play.

However, every step introduces potential risks, including:

Incorrectly entered data
Misinterpreted information
Errors that result in an inaccurate or incorrect formula

There are several strategies that can help minimize or eliminate these risks and create a safer and more efficient formulation process.

1. Strong Specification Design

Specifications typically contain nutrient and ingredient minimums and maximums but should also include other factors such as those related to production. A well-designed specification ensures that formulas meet all requirements, avoid errors and can be manufactured with minimal risk of error.

2. Continuous Feedback

Capturing feedback from quality control and production teams and from on-farm performance helps improve specifications, ingredient data, and formulation decisions.

3. Integrated Systems

Manual data entry increases the likelihood of mistakes. Integrations between business systems help ensure data is transferred quickly and accurately. This improves visibility into the impact of changes and strengthens decision-making.

4. Effective Optimization Tools

Optimization tools help ensure that specification design uses ingredient information correctly. This supports accurate, cost-effective formulations that maintain quality.

Common Challenges that Create Risk

Formulators often review hundreds of formulas across multiple production sites and must consider many variables. Mistakes can occur and these mistakes can be overlooked. The impact of mistakes can be significant, ranging from manufacturing inefficiencies and poor quality to decreased intake or poor performance at the farm.

Common errors seen in formulations include:

Nutrition that is out of specification, impacting performance
Nutrition that does not match declared values, creating audit risk
Ingredients included at incorrect levels
Missing ingredients
Ingredients added unintentionally
Excessive ingredient movement between versions
Disallowed ingredient combinations

Technology that Closes the Compliance Gap

Datacor provides trusted formulation software designed to verify data and ensure formulas are accurate. Automated checks make it easier to confirm that formulas meet specifications, legal requirements, nutritional targets, and production constraints.

Introducing Ara Comply^TM

Datacor is preparing to launch Ara Comply, a new module in the Ara Formulation platform that simplifies and strengthens compliance. Users can create rules for ingredients and nutrients, including permitted tolerances, absolute limits, and production parameters. These rules are applied during an automated audit of formulas, highlighting any errors before those formulas reach production. Formulas which pass these checks are automatically approved, whilst those failing must be corrected before proceeding. All results are stored for future reference.

Additional Tools for Smarter Quality Management

Ara DataTrace^TM stores formulation history and tracks changes to formulas over time.
Ara Labels^TM automatically generates legally compliant product declarations that include ingredient listings, nutrient declarations, and required warnings and messages.

Together, these tools support a holistic approach to formulation quality. Traditional manual review processes often involve multiple stakeholders, are time consuming, and can introduce inconsistencies. Technology improves efficiency, accuracy, and responsiveness.

These tools provide measurable benefits through more accurate formulas and ingredient purchasing plans. They help manufacturers respond to changing circumstances while maintaining quality. They reduce risk of error and improve quality and compliance.

To learn more about Datacor’s formulation capabilities, get in touch.