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Our Quality Promise
 "Quality" is a word that gets tossed around quite a bit by companies that think you will be impressed just because they use the word. Quality without substance is nothing more than a hollow promise that cannot be supported by the facts. At Feed Energy Company our promise of quality goes beyond words to the practices we follow every day.
At Feed Energy, quality starts with purchasing raw materials only from those suppliers that offer a consistent source of materials. Feed Energy's Quality Assurance Program, enhanced by our Safe Feed/Safe Food certification, has been designed to focus on screening and testing in order to meet our quality criteria.This criterion is the cornerstone of our Quality Control Program, and we will never compromise these standards. Quality Raw Materials translate into a quality finished product. Each step of the manufacturing process, including Blending Control, is monitored by our in-house laboratory, which allows us to not only monitor the quality, but the efficiency of the process. Better efficiency means we can provide the best possible value to our customers.
At Feed Energy, our focus on quality goes beyond the product. Feed Energy has implemented a comprehensive Biosecurity Program designed to keep your operation safe from potential contamination. Our customers have come to expect a high level of service from Feed Energy. For example, if you need a new tank or your current system needs to be calibrated, we stand ready to support you. That is important for both of us to ensure the accuracy of application of all ingredients. It takes quality people to produce a quality product, and we are proud of our team here at Feed Energy. We take pride in serving you and making sure that quality is built in from the time your order is taken until the time one of our friendly drivers delivers your product.
Click here for a printable version of Feed Energy's Quality Assurance Program.
| Feed Energy's Quality Assurance Program
Sources of Quality Raw Materials
All of Feed Energy's suppliers are thoroughly screened before they are included on our list of accepted suppliers. We do not buy material if we do not know the source of the material. We determine the safety and usefulness of the product by:
- specifying the parameters of the product
- requesting a series of normal production samples
- testing for pesticides, PCBs, fatty acid profile moisture, insolubles, unsaponafiables, free and total fatty acids as well as other tests
If the supplier's product is deemed safe and useful, we enter into a probationary period when we buy no more than a truckload per week for the first ten loads. Feed Energy's quality control staff will isolate and test these loads to determine if the product is consistent with the sample product screenings.
At the conclusion of successful probationary periods, we accept a supplier's material on an ongoing basis sampling for pesticides and other critical parameters. Finally, we retain a summary record of all our suppliers' analyses for yearly review with their management and quality control teams.
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Animal Fats
Animal fat (hog grease, beef tallow, poultry grease) is purchased directly from packing plants, such as Con Agra, Morrell, Hormel and Tyson. While often more costly, these materials have a consistent quality that is desirable for our finished products.
We do not purchase materials from independent renderers. Why? Renderers use various species of dead animals, often with unknown causes of death, and restaurant frying fats.
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Vegetable Oils
Acidulated vegetable oil is produced at our own production facilities in Des Moines, Sioux City and Pacific Junction (Iowa). This allows us to control the oil quality and maintain a consistent, refined product for our blending operations.
We purchase raw materials for our acidulation plants from large vegetable oil refineries, such as ADM, Bunge and Cargill. As with all of our products, raw materials are tested regularly for pesticides and PCBs and for consistency of fatty acid profiles and processing quality.
The vegetable oils we use contain approximately 1200 ppm mixed tocopherols, strong natural antioxidants.
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Quality Control Program
To ensure that quality products are delivered to our customers, Feed Energy maintains stringent quality control and assurance procedures throughout our production and testing processes. Our quality control laboratory is administered and staffed by trained chemists and engineers who develop and conduct a variety of product tests to make sure that all the raw materials we receive, as well as the products we deliver, meet our quality standards.The testing procedures and results are regularly verified using scheduled control and check samples tested by an independent laboratory.
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- All incoming and produced materials are segregated by tank for identification purposes throughout production and testing processes in accordance with Safe Feed/Safe Food certification.
- All materials are subjected to multistage separation and purification processes, which include filtration and thermo-gravimetric settling to ensure removal of foreign matter.
- All materials are sampled and tested using standard industry processes determined by the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS).
- All incoming, produced, and outgoing materials are tested by certified specialists, and the critical results are reported instantly—tests include
· 55 separate pesticides · PCBs
·Total & free fatty acids · Moisture
· Metabolizable energy · Iodine value
· Unsaponafiables · Insolubles
· Fatty acid profile · Stability
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- All the ingredients must pass stipulated federal regulations for pesticides and PCBs before being utilized in our production process, and non-conforming materials are isolated and returned immediately.
- Future shipments from suppliers with non-conforming materials are suspended until the origin of the nonconformity is investigated.
- Customers wishing pesticide analysis sheets or loading samples to accompany shipments can request this option.
- Samples of all incoming and outgoing materials are retained for a period of one year in accordance with our Safe Feed/Safe Food certification.
- Production orders, incoming storage reports and the laboratory quality control data are permanent records.
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Blending Control
Blending calculations for production orders are made using the results from both our in-house laboratory and third-party laboratory, based on proprietary formulas prepared for each batch of finished material. The formula is prepared using the fatty acid profiles of all of the materials in the blend and computed to provide the correct fatty acid profile of finished products—all driven by the customer's specifications for metabolizable energy (ME).
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- Uninterrupted product supply is assured as we ship from one tank while blending and testing in others.
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- Blend formulations and finished product analyses are verified prior to releasing shipments, and the reports are archived and used for statistical process control.
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