Students representing 11 nations will be on the Texas A&M campus Jan. 26-30 to participate in a short course on pet food and feed extrusion.
The course will be held at Rudder Tower, and it will be the 14th year the A&M Food Protein Research and Development Center has offered this course as a service to those in the pet food industry.
At the conference, participants will learn how pet foods are made from various raw materials and about different types of pet food packaging, said Mian Riaz, head of the extrusion technology program.
Riaz said that prior to Sept. 11, students representing 15 to 20 countries would attend, but recently, because of travel difficulties, the number has decreased.
“We attract so many international students because this a very popular course,” Riaz said. “No one else offers this course in any part of the world.”
Riaz said this course almost sells out every year. This year, 44 students will be in attendance from Barbados, Belize, Canada, England, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay.
Christopher Bailey, a poultry nutritionist and professor of poultry science will be speaking at the event about least cost feed formulation and the use of computers to formulate feeds for animals. He will also be speaking about formulating diets for specific animals.
“Companies in the feed industry are sending employees from all over to get training in these areas and the in extrusion,” he said.
Bailey described the extrusion as taking ground feed and formulating it into a pellet-like shape. Dog and cat foods are extruded products, Bailey said.
“The advantage of this is it cuts down on dust and prevents nutrient separation,” Bailey said.
Another speaker at the conference will be Delbert Gatlin, associate department head for wildlife and fisheries science, who will be discussing the manufacturing of fish feed.