Mapping your sustainability journey

Petfood Essentials

Why attend

Petfood Essentials is an interactive, informal educational pre-conference seminar, held the day prior to the opening of Petfood Forum.

In 2025, pet food industry professionals took a deep dive into pet food sustainability at Petfood Essentials on April 28.

Petfood Essentials 2025 Recap: Mapping your sustainability journey

Sustainability is becoming increasingly essential to pet food business success.

Not only are pet owners and stakeholders in the pet food supply chain expecting and demanding more environmentally responsible practices and results, but companies are also finding that following such practices often creates cost savings.

Yet starting or advancing an organization’s sustainability journey is tough and complicated. In this interactive Petfood Essentials seminar, experts — including from the Pet Sustainability Coalition — provided information and insights on key points along the journey, how to determine your environmental footprint and how to make your supply chain more sustainable. Sessions looked at sustainability in pet food ingredients, packaging and more, and attendees also participated in a hands-on life cycle analysis (LCA) group exercise.

Petfood Essentials sets the foundation for the entire Petfood Forum experience with more education and more networking, in an informal setting. Information about Petfood Essentials 2026 will be announced Fall 2025.

2025 sessions at a glance:

Welcome and opening session: How to start your sustainability journey — Allison Reser, director of sustainability and innovation, Pet Sustainability Coalition
Demystifying life cycle assessment for the pet food industry — Marty Heller, senior consultant, Blonk Sustainability
How human food and pet food can work together to deliver sustainability outcomes — Gail Tavill, global chief sustainability officer, OSI Group
Standardizing the environmental footprints of pet food ingredients: A case study with rendered animal byproducts — Janjoris van Diepen, footprint director North America, Mérieux NutriSciences/Blonk Sustainability and Allison Burdick, sustainability analyst, Pet Sustainability Coalition, also will provide an overview of her organization’s ingredient database
Rethinking pet food packaging: How sustainability shapes the future — Simone Obetti, CEO, Velvet Srl
Group presentations of their LCAs