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Poultry by-product meal, pet food grade, went from $835 a short ton on August 10 to $975 on September 9, about 17% in a month.1 The move started at sea. Peru cancelled its anchovy season, fishmeal hit a record, and aquafeed buyers began bidding for poultry meals.
In our Petfood Industry webinar on October 6, 2026, Annette Lundeen, Head of Product at Datacor Animal Nutrition, used a move like that to show how far one price change travels.
Watch the on-demand webinar →
How does a poultry meal price increase affect a pet food formula?
Annette's example uses round, illustrative numbers, not a real formula. Take a dry adult dog food with poultry meal at 25% of the formula, bought at $1,000 a ton. Poultry meal rises 20%, to $1,200.
If the formula stays as it is, every ton of finished food costs $50 more. Re-run least cost and poultry meal drops to 20%, where this product's soy limit and palatability constraints stop it. Soybean meal rises 4 points, chicken fat rises 1, and dicalcium phosphate and brewers rice adjust. In this example the new formula costs $22 a ton more, so re-optimizing recovers $28.
The buying plan changes too. On a 5,000-ton-a-month portfolio, the same shift would mean 200 more tons of soybean meal and 50 more tons of chicken fat every month. Soybean meal is a deep, grain-linked market, so the extra volume barely moves its price. Chicken fat is a different story: fat prices now follow fuel policy and energy markets, and supply can't expand when prices rise. One price move, five ingredients, and a buying plan for four of them.
Do alternate proteins protect margin?
Only when they move differently from the ingredient they replace. In 2026 they have often moved together. Fishmeal was up more than 75% from a year earlier by June, and feathermeal was up 35% year over year in the Arkansas spot market by mid-September.2 Annette's advice: re-run breakpoints with every alternate at current prices, and model marine proteins, poultry proteins and fats together.
What is a parametric study in pet food formulation?
It steps one ingredient's price across a range, for example poultry meal from $800 to $1,050 a ton, and re-optimizes every product at each step. The results show the breakpoint where an alternate enters a formula, the products it affects, and a usage forecast in tons for procurement. Each candidate then gets four checks before it's needed: nutrition, palatability, label and regulatory fit. Claims such as chicken content are held as constraints.
The fishmeal story was public by June, so a study run then would have shown each product's poultry meal exposure and its alternate breakpoints before prices climbed.
Studies like this run in a separate sandbox and never change a formula running at the mill. Procurement gets usage forecasts, breakpoints and cost impact, and sends back current prices and contract positions. Both teams work from the same ingredient data.
Watch the Full Webinar
The recording runs about 53 minutes and includes the 2026 chicken protein and soybean oil examples, the forward-buy framework and the audience Q&A.
Want to see how this would work on your own products?
Talk through your own formulas →
1 Fastmarkets, Sep 15, 2026 (poultry by-product meal, pet food grade, Aug 10 to Sep 9).
2 IMF global fishmeal price, Jun 2026 vs Jun 2025; USDA AMS National Animal By-Product Feedstuff Report, Sep 18, 2026 (feathermeal 80%, Arkansas).
