Sunday 04 November 2012
USA
Feed companies merge
Validus Ventures LLC and Facility Certification Institute Inc. (FCI) have reported an agreement in which FCI, including all FCI auditors, will combine with and become a division of Validus.
FCI president Richard Severson said his organization is "extremely excited" about the merger, which will add resources, including training capabilities, international experience and ISO 65 accreditation, to FCI's auditing and certification services.
Validus chief executive officer and president Earl Dotson said the merger represents "a great step forward" in broadening his business' services to include auditing and certification programs for agriculture, farm operations and the feed industry. He said FCI will continue to operate as FCI.
Terms of the merger were not released, but the announcement said the business combination should be completed by the end of this year.
The announcement was made Oct. 22.
FCI was founded in 2001 to provide auditing and certification services for the American Feed Industry Assn. (AFIA) that had just created the "Restricted Use Protein Products Program (RUPP)" to meet the challenges of the emergence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Europe in the late 1990s.
RUPP allowed North American feed and feed ingredient companies to be audited and certified by an independent, third-party specialist.
Since 2001, FCI has added auditing and certification programs for the North American Spray Dried Blood & Plasma Producers Assn. through the "Plasma & Hemoglobin Program."
FCI said it has partnered with land-grant universities to create the first hazard analysis and critical control point auditing and certification program for the feed industry and is now providing auditing and certification services for AFIA's "Safe Feed/Safe Food Program."
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Source: Argentine Beef Packers S.A.
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