The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has completed a revision to the standard for testing solids-mixing equipment for animal feeds.
This animal-feed mixer test standard provides a means to ultimately ensure
the quality of animal feed mixtures.
The use of salt (sodium chloride),
the tracer primarily referenced in the previous standard, had limitations in
validating mixer performance, particularly the mixing of micro-ingredient (drug)
feed additions and in validating “augmentation” or cross-contamination control
procedures.
Iron instead of salt
The revised standard (ASAE
S303.4 SEP2007) “Test procedure for solids-mixing equipment for animal feeds”,
specifically references the use of coloured iron particles or coloured iron
powder to use as tracers in these situations.
The revision allows US and
Canadian feed manufacturers to satisfy both domestic regulatory and
non-regulatory testing requirements while also satisfying requirements of
trading partners in Europe.
A copy of the document can be ordered by
contacting ASABE headquarters directly at martin@asabe.org.
ASABE
is recognized worldwide as a standards developing organization for food,
agricultural, and biological systems, with more than 225 standards currently in
publication.