Animal Food Manufacturing (United States) — NAICS 31111

An investor's primer. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 31111 is the whole of U.S. animal food manufacturing — every factory that makes something for an animal to eat. It splits cleanly into two very different halves: food for the animals people keep on the couch (dogs and cats) and food for the animals people raise for meat, milk, and eggs (plus horses, fish, and wild birds).

1. Overview

This is one NAICS code covering two businesses that could hardly be less alike. Dog and cat food (311111) is a branded consumer-packaged-goods industry sold in bags and cans off a retail shelf, driven by brand loyalty and "premiumization." Other animal food (311119) is an industrial, farm-facing feed business sold by the ton to livestock and poultry producers, driven by grain prices and the size of the national herd and flock. They share machinery (grinders, mixers, extruders, pelletizers) and a regulator (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and almost nothing else — different customers, different economics, different owners, and different ways to invest.

Why an investor cares. Taken together, animal food is a defensive, staple-linked manufacturing base — animals eat every day, in booms and recessions. But the two halves behave differently through a cycle. Pet food is the more defensive, higher-margin, brand-driven half; livestock feed is the more cyclical, thinner-margin, commodity-conversion half. There is no large pure-play public "animal food" stock to buy either one cleanly. Public exposure is embedded inside larger companies — diversified consumer-goods giants on the pet side, diversified agribusiness and specialty-ingredient firms on the feed side — while the biggest producers of both (Mars, Cargill, the Land O'Lakes/Purina cooperative, Diamond) are privately held or member-owned.

The distinctive fact about this level: it is unconcentrated on paper but concentrated in one half. Blend the two industries and the four largest firms make only about a quarter of shipments; look inside and the pet half is dominated by a handful of giants while the feed half is genuinely fragmented (Section 8). The aggregate hides the structure.

2. What's inside — and how the two halves differ

The level contains exactly two child industries. The contrast between them is the whole story:

CR4 = the share of industry shipments made by the four largest firms.

Read the table top to bottom and a pattern emerges. Feed is the bigger half by revenue, plants, and firms; pet food is the more valuable half per plant and more concentrated. Dog-and-cat plants are fewer but larger and more labor-intensive — about 67 workers per plant versus roughly 24 on the feed side — because branded pet food does more processing, cooking, canning, and packaging per ton. Feed mills, by contrast, mostly grind, mix, and pellet cheap bulk commodities and pass the ingredient cost straight through, which is why feed shows the higher revenue-per-worker (a materials business) but the thinner margin.

The two halves also exclude each other and everything upstream: rendering and meat byproduct processing (which supplies feed-grade fats and meals), oilseed processing (soybean meal, the key protein ingredient), pet retailers and e-commerce, and veterinary services are all classified elsewhere.[1][2]

3. How big it is (the rollup)

Our federal figures measure the industry at the factory gate — the value of what U.S. plants ship, before any wholesale or retail markup. At the 31111 level:

The children reconcile almost perfectly into this level, which is a mark of clean data: plants add exactly (451 + 1,463 = 1,914) and employment adds exactly (30,393 + 34,407 = 64,800). Firm counts nearly add (358 + 890 = 1,248 versus 1,241 at the level) — the small gap is firms that operate in both industries and are counted once here. Feed (~$47.3B) is roughly 63% of factory-gate revenue; dog-and-cat food (~$27.4B) the other ~37%.[3] More recent survey data put dog-and-cat-food shipments at $31.5 billion for 2023, reflecting category growth and higher prices.[5]

The undercount caveat — and it lands almost entirely on the feed half. The dog-and-cat side is not materially undercounted: it is a small number of large, capital-intensive plants that the Census captures well. The feed side is a different story. The $47.3B for 311119 counts only merchant feed mills; it leaves out two large pools — on-farm mixing (farmers who buy commodity ingredients and blend their own rations, never sold and never counted) and captive mills inside vertically integrated meat companies (Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue, Smithfield), whose enormous feed volumes are usually booked under the parent's meat business.[6] Include everything and the picture is far larger: the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) pegs the total U.S. animal-food ecosystem — livestock feed plus pet food, on-farm and captive volume included — at roughly $267 billion in sales for 2023; USDA's broader measure of farm feed expenditure was $83.6 billion in 2022, equal to 18.5% of all farm production expenses.[6][7] Separately, U.S. retail dog-and-cat-food sales ran about $43–52 billion in 2024, well above the factory-gate figure because retail adds wholesale and store markups and includes imported product (much premium wet food is canned abroad).[8][9] Treat ~$74.7 billion as the honest factory-gate anchor for this industry, and read the bigger numbers as the whole ecosystem around it.

4. The investable universe — where value concentrates across the two halves

There is no clean public pure-play for either half, and none for the level as a whole. Exposure is embedded in larger companies, and it splits along the pet/feed line. Scale below refers to the relevant segment, not the whole company. (Tickers and figures are reserved for this section and Section 10.)

Pet-food half (311111) — consumer-goods giants plus one pure-play:

The two biggest pet-food makers of all — Mars Petcare (Pedigree, Royal Canin, Iams, ~$22B global pet) and Diamond Pet Foods — are private, as are the fast-growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) challengers (The Farmer's Dog, Ollie, Nom Nom), typically venture- or private-equity-backed.[10]

Feed half (311119) — agribusiness and specialty ingredients:

The largest feed producers are private or member-owned: Cargill (the biggest U.S. miller, 211 mills; Nutrena, Provimi, Diamond V), the Land O'Lakes / Purina Animal Nutrition farmer cooperative, and privates Alltech (77 mills), Kemin, Kent, and Nutreco.[21] Note that Central Garden & Pet straddles both halves — its wild-bird and small-animal lines sit in 311119 while its broader business touches the pet aisle — the one public name that shows up on both sides of this level.

The takeaway for a stock-picker: on the pet side the cleanest public read is a diversified consumer-goods giant (Colgate/Hill's is the closest large-cap approximation, with one liquid growth pure-play in Freshpet); on the feed side, public value concentrates not in bulk milling at all but in the specialty-nutrition and additive layer stacked on top (Balchem, Phibro, ADM's Nutrition segment).

5. How the money works

Because the two halves earn money differently, the level has two distinct profit engines:

• Pet food = a branded, price-and-mix business. Demand is recurring and sticky (a pet eats the same food daily; owners rarely switch). The biggest profit driver over the past decade has been premiumization — owners trading up from grocery brands to premium, natural, "human-grade," fresh, and functional foods, which lifts average selling prices faster than volume. APPA found that 41% of dog owners and 38% of cat owners purchased premium food in 2024; mixers and toppers were purchased by 16% of dog owners and 19% of cat owners, increases of 129% and 138% respectively from 2018.[22] Input costs (animal proteins, grains, fats, vitamins, and especially cans/aluminum/pouches) set the gross margin; producer-level pet-food prices rose ~34% from late 2018 to late 2025.[23] The vet and premium-specialty channels carry the richest margins, while grocery/mass and private label are higher-volume and lower-margin.

• Feed = a commodity-conversion (toll) business with a specialty layer. For bulk feed, 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 not the price of feed but the spread per ton (margin over ingredient and conversion cost) times tons sold.[6] The levers are mill utilization, least-cost formulation (swapping cheap distillers grains for corn/soybean meal to hit a nutrition spec), and freight radius — bulk feed is too heavy and cheap to ship far, so pricing power is local. The real profit and nearly all the public-market value sit in the value-added specialty layer on top: premixes, medicated additives, vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and probiotics, sold on performance (feed conversion, growth, immunity) rather than price per ton.

The shared thread: both halves are highly automated materials businesses — revenue per employee is ~$1.15M across the level — where scale, utilization, and ingredient buying matter more than headcount. The difference is who holds the pricing power: in pet food, the brand; in feed, whoever owns the patented specialty ingredient.

6. What drives demand

The two halves respond to different master variables:

• Pets vs. protein. Pet-food demand tracks the pet population and "humanization" — about 95 million U.S. households own a pet (53% a dog, 39% a cat), around 90% regard pets as family, and premium adoption keeps rising even as pet-population growth has plateaued after the pandemic adoption surge.[24] Feed demand tracks the size of the national herd and flock, which is the master variable on that side.
• The feed cycle is split right now. Cattle are at a historic low — USDA counted 86.2 million head 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.[25][26] Broiler chickens are at record production — a tailwind for poultry feed; from 2015 through 2024, U.S. broiler production increased 17.3%.[27] Egg-layer feed was cut by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which killed more than 60 million table-egg layers between late 2024 and spring 2025.[25] Aquaculture feed is the fastest-growing niche.
• Grain prices cut both ways. Cheap corn and soybean meal (corn around $4.00–$4.25/bushel and soybean meal $275–$325/ton in 2025) lower feed cost (encouraging herd retention on the feed side and supporting pet-food margins) but can lower the dollar value of feed sold. A soft 2025–26 grain complex is broadly supportive for both halves' margins.[23][28]
• Trade-down risk on the premium tier. Feeding is non-discretionary, but the premium tier of pet food is discretionary — APPA found that 22% of owners reduced pet spending during 2025, while roughly half reported unchanged spending.[24] On the feed side, farmers cull when feed costs spike.
• Long-term protein demand rising. USDA projects per-capita red-meat and poultry consumption increasing from 226 pounds per person in 2027 to 241 pounds in 2035, supportive for feed demand.[29]

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-level overlay — a shared regulatory spine over two different rulebooks.

• FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act). The Preventive Controls for Animal Food rule (21 CFR Part 507) requires plants across the whole level to register with the FDA, follow good manufacturing practices, conduct hazard analysis, implement risk-based controls, and maintain monitoring, corrective-action, verification, and recordkeeping systems — a real compliance cost that favors scale.[30][31]
• AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials). A voluntary body (no legal authority of its own) that writes the model nutrient profiles, ingredient definitions, and labeling rules that states adopt and enforce, for both pet food and livestock feed. An ingredient generally must be AAFCO-defined or FDA-approved to be sold. A notable wrinkle: the FDA–AAFCO memorandum of understanding on ingredient definitions expired October 1, 2024, adding near-term uncertainty for novel ingredients.[32]
• Feed-only rules. The livestock half carries extra layers the pet half does not: the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), which since 2017 has required a veterinarian's order to put medically important antibiotics in feed (shrinking routine medicated feed and pushing demand toward non-antibiotic alternatives), and the ruminant feed ban on most mammalian protein in cattle feed (a legacy of "mad cow disease").[33][34]
• Pet-only sensitivities. The pet half is more exposed to consumer-facing safety events — recalls (Salmonella, aflatoxin) and the FDA's 2018–19 inquiry linking some grain-free diets to canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) — which can reshape demand and force costly reformulation. Raw pet food carries elevated pathogen risk; an FDA study found commercially available raw pet food more likely than other tested formats to contain disease-causing bacteria.[35][36]
• Workplace safety (feed). OSHA's grain-handling standard (29 CFR 1910.272) expressly covers feed mills; grain dust can explode, and workers face bin engulfment, falls, machinery injuries, and respiratory exposure.[37]

8. Consolidation and competitive dynamics

The aggregate concentration figures are misleading — read the halves. At the 31111 level the four largest firms make just 25.4% of shipments, the top eight 37.4%, and the HHI is 276.2, well below the 1,500 that economists treat as "unconcentrated."[3] But that blend is dominated by the larger, genuinely fragmented feed half (top-4 ~23.3%, HHI ~219, sustained by hundreds of local mills that survive because bulk feed can't travel far).[38] The smaller pet half is the opposite — concentrated, with the top four firms making ~56.6% of shipments, the top eight ~68%, and four consumer-goods giants (Mars, Nestlé Purina, Colgate/Hill's, General Mills/Blue Buffalo) dominating at retail.[10][39] One code, two market structures.

Consolidation runs on different tracks, too:

• On the pet side, deal activity is about brands and formats — Post Holdings' ~$1.2B entry via J.M. Smucker's value pet brands (2023), Mars's acquisition of Champion Petfoods (Orijen/Acana), and a steady stream of premium/fresh/treat deals, with private label taking share (private-label pet sales reached ~$5.5B in the year to mid-2025 and grew faster than national brands).[14][40]
• On the feed side, the bulk-milling map changes slowly, but specialty nutrition and additives see active M&A — Cargill's roll-up of Provimi and Diamond V, ADM's build-out of animal nutrition, and Phibro's $350M purchase of Zoetis's medicated-feed-additive portfolio in 2024 — value migrating up the chain toward the research-driven layer.[18][21]

A common countervailing force spans both: retailer and integrator power. Walmart, Costco, Chewy, and Amazon private labels squeeze branded pet margins, while vertically integrated meat companies pull huge feed volumes off the open market entirely.

9. Risks

• Input-cost and packaging inflation — proteins, grain, fats, energy, freight, and (on the pet side) cans/aluminum/pouches; producer-level pet-food prices rose ~34% from late 2018 to late 2025, and elevated manufacturing costs have become a new baseline.[23]
• Tariffs and imported ingredients — a live 2025 risk on both sides (packaging and canned wet food on the pet side; imported vitamins and amino acids, largely from China, on the feed side).[23]
• Livestock cyclicality and disease (feed half) — the cattle herd at a 70-year low compresses ruminant-feed volume for years, and HPAI or African swine fever can vaporize regional feed demand overnight.[25][26]
• Premium trade-down and demand maturity (pet half) — U.S. pet-population growth has plateaued, so results lean on premiumization holding up; downturns shift share to private label.[24][40]
• Recalls and product liability — contamination carries outsized reputational and financial damage across both halves, more acutely on the consumer-facing pet side; raw pet food carries elevated pathogen risk.[35]
• Regulatory tightening — the post-2024 FDA/AAFCO ingredient-review shift, the ongoing squeeze on medicated feed, and the state-by-state patchwork all add cost.[32][33]
• Thin margins with limited scale leverage in bulk feed — local freight economics cap how much national scale helps at the commodity end.
• Capital intensity of fresh pet food — freezer/kitchen buildouts (Freshpet) carry execution and margin risk if growth slows; fresh formats add spoilage, refrigeration failure, and returns.[15]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Match the vehicle to the half you want.

• For a defensive, dividend-style read on premium pet nutrition, the practical vehicles are diversified consumer large-caps — Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL; Hill's is ~a quarter of the company and its growth engine), General Mills (NYSE: GIS; Blue Buffalo), J.M. Smucker (NYSE: SJM), Post Holdings (NYSE: POST), and Nestlé (Purina, via ADRs — American depositary receipts). For pure growth exposure to the fastest-growing pet niche, Freshpet (NASDAQ: FRPT) is the only sizable U.S. pure-play — higher reward, higher volatility, no dividend.[11][12][15]
• For the feed half, skip bulk milling and buy the specialty layer: ADM (NYSE: ADM) for diversified animal nutrition, Balchem (NASDAQ: BCPC) and Phibro (NASDAQ: PAHC) as the closest focused plays on higher-margin additives, and Central Garden & Pet (NASDAQ: CENT) for consumer/hobby feed. Smithfield (NASDAQ: SFD) provides captive-feed exposure inside an integrated hog/pork company.[16][18][19][20]
• In every case, feed or pet food is one segment of a broader company — you are buying diversified consumer staples or diversified agribusiness, not a bet on animal food alone.

Private routes. The richest ownership of both halves is private: Mars, Diamond, and DTC challengers on the pet side; Cargill, the Land O'Lakes/Purina cooperative, Alltech, Kemin, and Nutreco on the feed side. Private and institutional investors reach them through private equity and venture (premium/fresh pet brands and feed-technology startups have drawn heavy interest), private credit to mid-market manufacturers, cooperative membership, or direct ownership of a contract/private-label plant — a capacity-utilization, cost-plus business rather than a brand bet.[21]

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). A stable, cash-generative, mildly-growing industry with an unusually defensive demand base, but a split personality. Near-term, soft grain prices are a tailwind to 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 in opposite directions by record broiler production (tailwind) and a historically small cattle herd (multi-year headwind), with value steadily migrating to specialty nutrition. USDA projects long-term meat demand rising (to 241 lbs per capita by 2035), supportive for feed volumes even as genetics and precision nutrition reduce feed required per pound of meat.[29] Bottom line: the best economics accrue to scale brands and premium/fresh on the pet side, and to the patented specialty-nutrition layer on the feed side. Most investors will own this industry inside a diversified consumer or agribusiness name rather than as a stand-alone bet — and should decide which of the two halves they actually want before they do.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 311111 Dog and Cat Food Manufacturing. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=311111&input=311111&year=2022
2. NAICS Association / U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS Code 311119 — Other Animal Food Manufacturing (definition and exclusions), 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=311119
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration Ratios and Receipts, NAICS 31111 and children 311111 / 311119 (receipts, firms, concentration ratios, HHI), 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
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18. 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/
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