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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

GroupNAICS 3111

Animal Food Manufacturing (United States) — NAICS 3111

An investor's primer at the industry-group level. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 3111 is the four-digit "industry group" for U.S. animal food manufacturing. It contains exactly one child industry — 31111, Animal Food Manufacturing — so this level and its child are, for practical purposes, the same thing. This page gives the level's own ground-truth federal figures and the shape of the business; for the full detail, read the 31111 primer.

1. Overview

Animal food manufacturing is every U.S. factory that makes something for an animal to eat. It is a defensive, staple-linked manufacturing base — animals eat every day, in booms and recessions — but it houses two very different businesses under one roof: branded pet food sold in bags and cans off a retail shelf, and industrial livestock feed sold by the ton to farmers. There is no large pure-play public "animal food" stock; public exposure is embedded inside diversified consumer-goods and agribusiness companies, while the biggest producers (Mars, Cargill, the Land O'Lakes/Purina cooperative, Diamond) are private or member-owned.[8][19]

2. What's inside — and why 3111 equals 31111

The four-digit group 3111 has a single child, 31111, so their statistics are identical — every firm, plant, dollar, and worker in 3111 is in 31111 and vice versa. The classification only becomes informative one level down, inside 31111, where the industry splits into two national-product industries that could hardly be less alike:

Child of 31111 What it makes ~Share of receipts (2022) ~Share of plants / workers (2023) Structure
311111 — Dog & Cat Food Kibble, canned/pouch wet food, treats ~37% (~$27.4B)[1] ~24% (451) / ~47% (30,393)[2] Concentrated (top-4 ~56.6%); branded consumer goods; ~67 workers per plant[34]
311119 — Other Animal Food Livestock/poultry/aquaculture feed, premixes, wild-bird seed ~63% (~$47.3B)[1] ~76% (1,463) / ~53% (34,407)[2] Fragmented (top-4 ~23.3%, HHI ~219); commodity conversion; ~24 workers per plant[34]

The shape of the split is worth holding on to: feed is the bigger half by revenue, plants, and firms; pet food is the more valuable half per plant and the more concentrated one. Dog-and-cat plants are fewer but larger and more labor-intensive because branded pet food does far more cooking, canning, and packaging per ton, which is why feed shows the higher revenue per worker (~$1.37M against ~$1.0M) on a thinner margin.[1][2]

Because 3111 has only the one child, everything below — the two-halves story, the profit engines, the ownership map — lives in the 31111 primer. This page stays at the rollup.

3. How big it is

Our federal figures measure the industry at the factory gate — the value of what U.S. plants ship, before wholesale or retail markup. These are the 3111 level's own numbers, and they equal 31111's exactly.

Metric (NAICS 3111) Value Source/year
Value of shipments / receipts ~$74.7 billion Economic Census, 2022[1]
Firms 1,241 Economic Census, 2022[1]
Establishments (plants) 1,914 County Business Patterns, 2023[2]
Employment 64,800 County Business Patterns, 2023[2]
Annual payroll ~$4.47 billion County Business Patterns, 2023[2]
Average pay (payroll ÷ employees) ~$68,900 derived from [2]
Revenue per employee ~$1.15 million derived from [1][2]
Concentration: CR4 / CR8 / CR20 / CR50 25.4% / 37.4% / 52.3% / 68.2% Economic Census, 2022[1]
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) 276.2 Economic Census, 2022[1]

CR4 = the share of industry shipments made by the four largest firms; HHI = a standard concentration index where below ~1,500 is treated as "unconcentrated."

The level reconciles cleanly. The two product industries add exactly into it on plants (451 + 1,463 = 1,914) and on employment (30,393 + 34,407 = 64,800); only the firm count differs slightly (358 + 890 = 1,248 against 1,241 here), because firms operating in both industries are counted once at this level.[1][2] Newer survey data put dog-and-cat-food shipments at $31.5 billion for 2023, above the 2022 census figure — category growth plus higher prices.[3]

Undercount caveat — it lands almost entirely on the feed half. The dog-and-cat side is not materially undercounted: a small number of large plants the Census captures well. The ~$47.3B for livestock feed, by contrast, counts only merchant feed mills; it omits two large pools — on-farm mixing (farmers who blend their own rations, never sold and never counted) and captive mills inside vertically integrated meat companies (Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue, Smithfield), whose feed volumes are booked under the parent's meat business.[4] Include everything and the ecosystem is far larger: the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) pegs the total U.S. animal-food ecosystem at roughly $267 billion in sales for 2023, and USDA's broader measure of farm feed expenditure was $83.6 billion in 2022, 18.5% of all farm production expenses.[4][5] On the pet side the gap runs the other way, downstream: U.S. retail dog-and-cat-food sales ran about $43–52 billion in 2024, above the factory gate because retail adds wholesale and store markups and includes imported product.[6][7] Treat ~$74.7 billion as the honest factory-gate anchor for this level, and read the bigger figures as the whole ecosystem around it.

4. The investable universe

There is no clean public pure-play for the level, and exposure splits along the pet/feed line (tickers and figures are covered in full in the 31111 primer; a summary here):

  • Pet-food half — diversified consumer-goods giants carry the exposure: Nestlé (Purina, ~$22B global pet), Colgate-Palmolive (Hill's, $4.6B and ~23% of company sales at a 23% segment margin), General Mills (Blue Buffalo, $2.5B in FY2025 at ~20% segment margin), J.M. Smucker (Meow Mix, Milk-Bone, ~$1.5B), and Post Holdings (Rachael Ray Nutrish, Kibbles 'n Bits, a slice of a $4.1B segment). The one sizable U.S. pure-play is Freshpet ($1.1B sales in 2025, 41% gross margin). The two biggest makers, Mars Petcare (~$22B global pet) and Diamond, are private, as are the fast-growing direct-to-consumer challengers.[8][9][10][11][12][13]
  • Feed half — public value sits not in bulk milling but in the specialty-nutrition and additive layer on top: ADM (Animal Nutrition, ~$3.3B in 2025 at a 2.9% margin, 82 North American mills), Balchem (~$954M), Phibro Animal Health (~$1.0B), and Central Garden & Pet (~$3.2B company revenue; wild-bird and small-animal feed — the one public name that straddles both halves). Smithfield returned to public markets in January 2025 and offers captive-feed exposure inside an integrated hog/pork system. The largest millers — Cargill (211 mills) and the Land O'Lakes/Purina cooperative, plus privates Alltech (77 mills), Kemin, Kent, and Nutreco — are private or member-owned.[14][15][16][17][18][19]

5. How the money works

The level has two distinct profit engines. Pet food is a branded, price-and-mix business: demand is sticky, and the biggest profit lever over the past decade has been premiumization — 41% of dog owners and 38% of cat owners bought premium food in 2024, and mixers and toppers reached 16% and 19% of owners, up 129% and 138% since 2018.[20] Producer-level pet-food prices rose about 34% from late 2018 to late 2025, so input costs — proteins, grains, fats, and especially cans, aluminum, and pouches — set the gross margin.[22] Feed is a commodity-conversion (toll) business: ingredients are the overwhelming majority of cost (the 2022 Economic Census reports $35.3 billion of materials consumed in 311119, equal to 74.6% of shipment value) and pass straight through, so the number that matters is spread per ton × tons sold, with nearly all the public-market value in the patented specialty layer (premixes, additives, amino acids, enzymes) sold on performance rather than price.[4] Both are highly automated materials businesses (revenue per employee ~$1.15M at the level, ~$1.0M in pet food against ~$1.37M in feed); the difference is who holds the pricing power — the brand in pet food, the patent-holder in feed.[1][2]

6. What drives demand

The two halves respond to different master variables. Pet-food demand tracks the pet population and "humanization" — about 95 million U.S. households own a pet (53% a dog, 39% a cat) and roughly 90% regard pets as family — with premium adoption still rising even as pet-population growth has plateaued post-pandemic; 22% of owners nonetheless cut pet spending during 2025.[20][21] Feed demand tracks the size of the national herd and flock, and that signal is split right now: USDA counted 86.2 million cattle as of January 1, 2026, including 13.8 million on feed (down 3% year-over-year), the smallest herd since 1951 after seven straight years of contraction — a multi-year headwind for ruminant feed, since the cattle cycle commonly runs eight to twelve years — against record broiler production, up 17.3% from 2015 through 2024, a steady tailwind for poultry feed.[24][25][26] Egg-layer feed took a separate hit from highly pathogenic avian influenza, which killed more than 60 million table-egg layers between late 2024 and spring 2025.[24] Soft 2025–26 grain prices (corn around $4.00–$4.25 a bushel, soybean meal $275–$325 a ton) are broadly supportive of margins on both sides, and USDA projects per-capita red-meat and poultry consumption rising from 226 pounds in 2027 to 241 pounds by 2035.[27][28]

7. Regulation

Both halves are regulated as animal food by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), primarily through its Center for Veterinary Medicine, with a heavy state overlay.[29] The shared spine is the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) preventive-controls rule for animal food (21 CFR Part 507: registration, hazard analysis, food-safety plans, recordkeeping — a compliance cost that favors scale) and the AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) model nutrient profiles and ingredient definitions that states adopt and enforce; note the FDA–AAFCO ingredient-definition memorandum expired October 1, 2024, adding near-term uncertainty for novel ingredients.[30][31] The feed half carries extra layers the pet half does not — the Veterinary Feed Directive, which since 2017 has required a veterinarian's order for medically important antibiotics in feed, and the ruminant feed ban on most mammalian protein in cattle feed — while the pet half is more exposed to consumer-facing recalls and safety inquiries.[32][33] Full detail is in the 31111 primer.

8. Consolidation

The aggregate concentration figures are misleading — read the halves. At the 3111/31111 level the top four firms make just 25.4% of shipments and the HHI is 276.2, well below the "unconcentrated" threshold.[1] But that blend is dominated by the larger, genuinely fragmented feed half (top-4 ~23.3%, HHI ~219, sustained by hundreds of local mills because bulk feed can't travel far), while the smaller pet half is concentrated — top-4 ~56.6% and top-8 ~68%, with four consumer-goods giants dominating retail.[8][34] One code, two market structures. Deal activity runs on separate tracks: brands and formats on the pet side (Post Holdings' ~$1.2B entry via J.M. Smucker's value pet brands in 2023, Mars's purchase of Champion Petfoods), with private label taking share at roughly $5.5B in the year to mid-2025; specialty-nutrition and additive M&A on the feed side (Cargill's Provimi and Diamond V, Phibro's $350M purchase of Zoetis's medicated-feed portfolio in 2024).[12][16][19][23] A force common to both: retailer and integrator power — Walmart, Costco, Chewy, and Amazon private labels squeeze branded pet margins, while integrated meat companies pull feed volume off the open market entirely.

9. Risks

  • Input-cost and packaging inflation — proteins, grain, fats, energy, freight, and cans/aluminum/pouches on the pet side; producer-level pet-food prices rose ~34% from late 2018 to late 2025 and elevated manufacturing costs have become a new baseline.[22]
  • Tariffs and imported ingredients — a live 2025 risk (packaging and canned wet food on the pet side; vitamins and amino acids, largely from China, on the feed side).[22]
  • Livestock cyclicality and disease (feed half) — a 70-year-low cattle herd compresses ruminant-feed volume for years; avian influenza or African swine fever can vaporize regional demand overnight.[24][25]
  • Premium trade-down and demand maturity (pet half) — with pet-population growth plateaued, results lean on premiumization holding up; downturns shift share to private label.[21][23]
  • Recalls and regulatory tightening — contamination carries outsized reputational damage on the consumer-facing side, and the post-2024 FDA/AAFCO ingredient-review shift adds cost.[31]
  • Thin margins with limited scale leverage in bulk feed — with ingredients at ~75% of shipment value and pricing set inside a local freight radius, national scale helps less at the commodity end.[4]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Match the vehicle to the half you want. For a defensive read on premium pet nutrition, the practical vehicles are diversified consumer large-caps (Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills, J.M. Smucker, Post Holdings, Nestlé via ADRs), with Freshpet the only sizable U.S. pure-play growth name — higher reward, higher volatility, no dividend.[9][10][12][13] For the feed half, skip bulk milling and buy the specialty layer (ADM, Balchem, Phibro, Central Garden & Pet), with Smithfield as the captive-feed route inside an integrated hog/pork company.[14][15][16][17][18] In every case you are buying one segment of a broader company. The richest ownership of both halves is private — Mars, Diamond, and the DTC challengers on the pet side; Cargill, Land O'Lakes/Purina, Alltech, Kemin, and Nutreco on the feed side — reached through private equity/venture, private credit, cooperative membership, or direct plant ownership.[19]

Outlook. A stable, cash-generative, mildly-growing industry with an unusually defensive demand base but a split personality: soft grain prices aid margins on both sides; the pet half rides a maturing-but-not-exhausted premiumization story (fresh and cat outgrowing mainstream dry dog food); the feed half is pulled between record broiler production and a shrinking cattle herd, with value migrating to specialty nutrition, and USDA's projection of per-capita meat demand reaching 241 pounds by 2035 is supportive of feed volumes over the long run.[28] Most investors will own this industry inside a diversified consumer or agribusiness name — and should decide which of the two halves they actually want first. For the complete company-by-company detail, see the 31111 primer.

Sources

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration Ratios and Receipts, NAICS 3111 / 31111 and children 311111 / 311119 (receipts, firms, concentration ratios, HHI), 2022 (via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 3111 / 31111 / 311111 / 311119 (establishments, employment, payroll), 2023 (via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey, NAICS 311111 ($31.5B dog-and-cat-food shipments), 2023. https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES31BASIC01
  4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 311119 (materials consumed); American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), U.S. Animal Food Industry — Feed Facts and Economic Contribution (~$267B total ecosystem, 2023; on-farm and captive undercount), 2023–2024. https://www.afia.org/feedfacts/feed-industry-stats/u-s-animal-food-industry/
  5. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2022 Farm Expenditure Summary ($83.6B farm feed expenditure). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2023/2022_FarmExpenditures_FINAL_version%202.pdf
  6. Pet Food Processing, State of US pet food, treat industry in 2025, 2025. https://www.petfoodprocessing.net/articles/19810-state-of-us-pet-food-treat-industry-in-2025
  7. Grand View Research, U.S. Pet Food Market Size & Share Report, 2025. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-pet-food-market-report
  8. PetfoodIndustry, Top 20 pet food companies 2024 — Purina, Mars still dominate (Mars and Nestlé Purina scale). https://www.petfoodindustry.com/top-pet-food-companies/article/15751940/chart-top-20-pet-food-companies-2024-purina-mars-still-dominate
  9. Colgate-Palmolive, Form 10-K FY2025 (SEC) (Hill's sales, share of company, segment margin). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/21665/000002166526000006/cl-20251231.htm
  10. General Mills, Fiscal 2025 Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results (Blue Buffalo), 2025. https://investors.generalmills.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2025/General-Mills-Reports-Fiscal-2025-Fourth-quarter-and-Full-year-Results-and-Provides-Fiscal-2026-Outlook/default.aspx
  11. PetfoodIndustry, 2 brands led J.M. Smucker pet division to US$1.5 billion, 2024. https://www.petfoodindustry.com/pet-food-market/market-trends-and-reports/article/15664783/2-brands-led-jm-smucker-pet-division-to-us15-billion-in-fy23
  12. Post Holdings, Form 10-K FY2024 (SEC); Food Dive, Post enters pet food category through $1.2B deal with J.M. Smucker, 2023. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1530950/000153095024000365/post-20240930.htm
  13. Freshpet, Inc., 2025 Results (SEC). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1611647/000161164726000002/frpt-exx991x20260223.htm
  14. Archer-Daniels-Midland, 2025 Form 10-K (Animal Nutrition segment revenue and operating profit). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/7084/000000708426000011/adm-20251231.htm
  15. Central Garden & Pet Company, Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results (net sales ~$3.2B). https://ir.central.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/423/central-garden-pet-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal
  16. Zoetis / Phibro Animal Health / AgTechNavigator, Zoetis to Sell Medicated Feed Additive Portfolio to Phibro for $350M, 2024. https://www.agtechnavigator.com/Article/2024/04/30/phibro-snaps-up-zoetis-medicated-feed-portfolio-for-350m/
  17. Balchem Corporation, FY2024 Revenue (~$954M). https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/bcpc/revenue/
  18. Smithfield Foods, 2025 Form 10-K (Nasdaq return under SFD, January 2025). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/91388/000009138826000014/smf-20251228.htm
  19. Feed & Grain / WATTAgNet, North American and World's Top Feed Companies 2024 (Cargill, ADM, Alltech mill counts). https://www.feedandgrain.com/animal-feed-manufacturing/article/15711697/31-north-american-companies-ranked-in-the-worlds-top-feed-companies-2024
  20. American Pet Products Association (APPA), 2025 Dog & Cat Report (premium and mixer/topper adoption), 2025. https://americanpetproducts.org/news/the-american-pet-products-association-appa-releases-2025-dog-cat-report
  21. American Pet Products Association (APPA), 2026 State of the Industry (95M pet-owning households, spending patterns), 2026. https://americanpetproducts.org/news/u.s.-pet-industry-reaches-158-billion-in-2025-poised-for-continued-growth-in-2026
  22. PetfoodIndustry, Stability to chaos: 4 decades of pet food production costs and Tariffs' impact on pet food, 2025. https://www.petfoodindustry.com/regions/us-and-canada/article/15772800/stability-to-chaos-4-decades-of-pet-food-production-costs
  23. PetfoodIndustry, Private label pet food growth outpaced national brands and Pet food mergers and acquisitions cautious but continue in 2025, 2025. https://www.petfoodindustry.com/pet-food-market/market-trends-and-reports/article/15750524/private-label-pet-food-growth-outpaced-national-brands
  24. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook; Livestock Production Cycles Affect Long-Term Price Outlook, 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2025/march/livestock-production-cycles-affect-long-term-price-outlook-for-cattle-hogs-and-chickens
  25. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Cattle Inventory January 2026 (86.2M head; 13.8M on feed). https://data.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2026/01-30-2026.php
  26. USDA Economic Research Service, Poultry & Eggs Sector at a Glance (broiler production growth). https://ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/poultry-eggs/sector-at-a-glance
  27. Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture / farmdoc, Prospects for Swine Feed Costs in 2025 (corn and soybean meal below long-run averages), 2024–2025. https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/resource/2025/06/prospects-for-swine-feed-costs-in-the-second-half-of-2025/
  28. USDA Economic Research Service, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2035, OCE-2026-1. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/113817/OCE-2026-1.pdf
  29. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA's Regulation of Pet Food. https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/fdas-regulation-pet-food
  30. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FSMA Final Rule for Preventive Controls for Animal Food; How Do I Start an Animal Food Business. https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-foods-feeds/how-do-i-start-animal-food-business
  31. Pet Food Institute, How Pet Food Is Regulated (FDA–AAFCO MOU expiry Oct 1, 2024), 2024. https://www.petfoodinstitute.org/how-pet-food-is-regulated/
  32. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD). https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/development-approval-process/veterinary-feed-directive-vfd
  33. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Feed Ban Enhancement: Implementation Questions and Answers. https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/bovine-spongiform-encephalopathy/feed-ban-enhancement-implementation-questions-and-answers
  34. Iowa State University, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Concentration in the U.S. Food and Agricultural Industries (2022 Census analysis), 26PB51 (311111 and 311119 concentration ratios). https://www.card.iastate.edu/files/publications/pdf/26PB51.pdf