In 2025, the California Department of Agriculture’s (CDFA) Commercial Feed Regulatory Program (CFRP) and Safe Animal Feed Education Program (SAFE) continued work to ensure feed safety, food safety, and quality of commercial feed in California. Inspectors and staff met goals and embraced changes throughout the last year.
Inspection and Sampling
In 2025, CFRP completed a second year of conducting “California Feed Safety Inspections.” These comprehensive inspections occur every 2-5 years per facility, and cover the Preventive Controls for Animal Food rule, Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMP), other applicable regulations such as medicated feed CGMPs, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) rule, and veterinary feed directive (VFD) rule, as well as compliance with all California commercial feed laws and regulations.
CFRP conducted 278 inspections at commercial feed licensed locations, including 24 comprehensive California Feed Safety Inspections. All inspections at commercial feed licensed locations included verifying firm information and activities, and sampling.
CFRP obtained 660 feed samples, and the overall sample violation rate was 19.4%, including assay and label violations. CFRP completed 108 violation follow ups, 86 regulatory note follow ups, and responded to 10 feed complaints. CFRP inspectors assisted the California Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS) Laboratory in obtaining feed samples in support of their Laboratory Flexible Funding Model (LFFM) agreement with U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA). CFRP inspectors obtained 36 samples of whole corn for the LFFM agreement.
CFRP conducted 56 inspections at retail feed establishments, which included verifying compliance with restricted livestock drug regulations and VFD distributor requirements, if applicable, and verifying license status of the manufacturers of retail commercial feed.
Licensing and Tonnage Reporting
As of 12/31/2025, CFRP has 2,113 commercial feed licensees. CFRP continued to implement late fees for delinquent license renewals and delinquent tonnage reports.
In 2025, CFRP continued a second year of conducting detailed inspection tonnage tax examinations of quarterly tonnage reported to CFRP. Six (6) firms were selected at random, resulting in findings of unpaid inspection tonnage tax and unlicensed firms distributing feed in California.
Laws and Regulations
The CFRP regulations aligning ingredient definitions with national standards by adding recognized official names of feed ingredients from Chapter 6 the Association of American Feed Control Officials Official Publication were approved by the Office of Administrative Law on July 1, 2025, and are in effect. This regular rulemaking superseded the emergency regulations adopted in November 2024.
Safe Animal Feed Education (SAFE)
SAFE continued to support the industry in implementing requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act and completed several food safety plan educational reviews upon request. SAFE hosted its ninth Preventive Controls Qualified Individual (PCQI) for Animal Food training in December, 2025, with 21 attendees completing the course.
SAFE continued to support industry in meeting feed label requirements and completed dozens of voluntary label reviews upon request.
SAFE released the following educational resources in 2025:
Focus on Feed Safety: Labeling of Free Choice Feeds
Tips on Commercial Feed Labeling: Labeling Guarantees
Industry Events and Meetings
CFRP Manager Rachelle Kennedy and SAFE Program Senior Environmental Scientist KC Gutenberger presented at the State of the Science Summit: Reducing Methane from Animal Agriculture at UC Davis. The presentation focused on the regulatory process for gaining state and federal approval for the use of feed additives or drugs intended to reduce enteric methane emissions in animal agriculture.
SAFE’s KC Gutenberger was asked to speak at the California Wool Growers Association Annual Convention Workshop August 15th hosted at California State University, Chico. KC presented “Compliance in the Trough; What Producers Need to Know About Feed Additives and Supplements.” The presentation focused on the importance of feeding products to their label specifications, what to look for on a feed label, and how to avoid using products that are unlawful.
CFRP and SAFE staff attended the California Grain and Feed Industry Conference, California Animal Nutrition Conference (CANC), and the California Dairy Sustainability Summit.
National Involvement
CFRP staff attended the annual Animal Feed Regulatory Program Standards (AFRPS) Face-to-Face Meeting as required per the terms of CFRP’s cooperative agreement with FDA; this was the final meeting for the current five-year cooperative agreement, which expired on June 30, 2025. CFRP was awarded a new three-year AFRPS Maintenance cooperative agreement from U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which began September 20, 2025, and will expire June 30, 2028.
Throughout the year, CFRP staff remained engaged with the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) by attending the Annual Meeting, Midyear Meeting, and Feed Administrators Seminar, and serving on several committees and workgroups. CFRP’s Samantha Moran-Defty was appointed to the AAFCO Board of Directors.
Employee Updates
In October 2025 Supervising Special Investigator Mike Davidson retired with 40 years of exemplary service to California’s commercial agriculture industry, and leadership to the CFRP, Safe Animal Feed Education Program (SAFE) and Livestock Drug Program (LDP). Samantha Moran-Defty accepted the Supervisor role covering Northern California, and Ted Bert accepted the Supervisor role covering Southern California. Alejandro Ramirez accepted the Senior Environmental Scientist, Specialist role of Compliance Office, and Valerie White accepted the Senior Environmental Scientist, Specialist role of Contracts/Program Administration Lead. Lindsey Collier moved to the Lab Desk Coordinator and will continue to cover the Northern California region until the vacant position is filled.