AI opportunities abound in pet food industry

ATLANTA — Whether ChatGPT is helping to draft your emails or Microsoft Copilot is summarizing your work documents, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a technology of the future. These systems, which expand far beyond the tools we have at our fingertips, are being used daily across all industries to enhance efficiency, customize nutrition and accelerate product development.

During the American Feed Industry Association’s (AFIA) 2026 Pet Food Conference on Jan. 27 in Atlanta, panelists shared their insights about the integration of AI in the pet food industry in a panel discussion: “Step into the Future: The AI Journey from Recipe Design to Kibble Production.”

From left to right: Hana Bieliauskas of Inspire PR Group, Johanna Ballesteros of SWARM Engineering, Filip Snauwaert of BESTMIX Software and Eric Altom of Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health.

| Source: ©Sosland Publishing Co./Pet Food Processing

Moderated by Eric Altom, Ph.D., director of Innovation for Companion Animals and technical nutritionist at Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health, the panel consisted of four industry representatives with unique perspectives to share.

Hana Bieliauskas, senior vice president and partner at Inspire PR Group, offered her viewpoint as a public relations and marketing professional. Her agency often uses AI tools for idea generation and content creation, in addition to measuring consumer sentiment and feedback toward industry brands.

Johanna Ballesteros, regional sales manager —
Latin America for SWARM Engineering, shared how her company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform uses AI to save costs, reduce waste and deliver environmental benefits to many in the agri-food industry.

Filip Snauwaert, team lead and solutions architect at BestMix Software, spoke about AI’s applications in manufacturing. BestMix provides specialized AI-enabled software for the food, feed and pet food industries. The company’s AI tools help enhance formulation and optimize production to reduce formulation time, minimize nutrient variability and cut production costs.

Tara Zedayko, chief scientific officer at Ollie, delivered the pet brand’s perspective to the discussion. Ollie uses AI to analyze customer submitted pet health data (through photos and customer surveys) to provide personalized pet nutrition and aid in product development.   

While the excitement and anticipation of AI is strong for many, there is an amount of trepidation as well. Topping the list of common AI misconceptions, which is often the cause of delayed acceptance of the technology, is that AI will replace jobs.

“There is a fear that AI is going to take over our jobs but that’s not true,” Ballesteros said. “AI is a tool that is going to empower us.”

Snauwaert shared examples in manufacturing where AI enables operators to work faster and smarter. A pet food manufacturer working with BestMix was able to provide historical and real-time data on its extrusion process so the company could create an AI model to help finetune product results. The AI model then provided feedback to the operator about how to adapt extrusion parameters to improve the product. AI gave the operator the tools to do the job better.

“It’s just a dashboard that gives the operator control to make fast decisions,” he said. “It will be another technology that will make everything more efficient.”

At Ollie, AI is used alongside veterinary nutritionists to enhance existing expertise.

“At Ollie, we apply AI to scale expertise that is really hard to come by. If you think about veterinary nutritionists, there are less than 100 in the country. We use AI with our expert assistance to provide personalized health plans based on the information our members provide,” Zedayko
said. “I think that idea that it’s out to take people’s jobs is definitely a misconception.”

Inspire PR uses AI tools to assist with creative content and to monitor online discussions about brands; it’s not replacing anyone’s job, it’s enhancing the work that’s being done.

Bieliauskas added, “AI is more of an assistant to you in your work.”

However, AI systems like ChatGPT aren’t always 100% accurate since they are pulling from information and data on the Internet that may not be verified. Always double check for accuracy, Bieliauskas advised.

“I’ve been coached when I’m using ChatGPT to view the content that come out as if it’s coming from one of your first or second-year interns — check everything,” Altom added.

Even with AI platforms that don’t use outside data, accuracy is crucial. BestMix builds software solutions using customer data to help optimize production, however the quality of the data is essential to ensure AI models are accurate and useful.

“The data set needs to be big enough to do something with… the quality of the data is very important,” Snauwaert said. 

Start with a problem you want to solve, Ballesteros advised. Whether it’s a problem in production, recipe development or even customer relations, define the problem first, then examine how AI might be able to assist. 

Companywide buy-in is also essential to AI success in any operation. 

“AI implementation needs the governance, the culture, the support and the education, which needs to extend to the suppliers and providers too,” Ballesteros said. “We need to educate everyone on how AI can be used in order to bring the barriers down.”

While lack of data can be an impediment to embracing AI technology, not embracing the technology and opportunities for the industry could be a long-term detriment to success. 

“I would say, just try. Try using it however you can,” Zedayko said. “Some use cases will fail, but others will thrive. And if we don’t try, we might get left behind — and that’s even worse.”

Snauwaert added, “Sometimes you just need to jump. Don’t be afraid of AI, just go for it.”

Read more coverage from the 2026 Pet Food Conference.