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[[File:|right|400px]] Title: What are the key elements of a LIMS for animal feed testing?

Author for citation: Shawn E. Douglas

License for content: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Publication date: May 2024

Introduction

This brief topical article will examine ...

Note: Any citation leading to a software vendor's site is not to be considered a recommendation for that vendor. The citation should however still stand as a representational example of what vendors are implementing in their systems.

A feed testing lab can operate within a number of different production, research, and public health contexts. They can:

• act as a third-party consultant, interpreting analytical data;
• provide research and development support for new and revised formulations;
• provide analytical support for nutrition and contaminant determinations;
• provide development support for analytical methods;
• ensure quality to specifications, accreditor standards, and regulations;
• develop informative databases and data libraries for researchers;
• manage in-house and remote sample collection, labeling, and registration, including on farms; and
• report accurate and timely results to stakeholders, including those responsible for monitoring public health.

This wide variety of roles further highlights the already obvious cross-disciplinary nature of analyzing animal feed ingredients and products, and interpreting the resulting data. The human biological sciences, veterinary sciences, environmental sciences, chemistry, microbiology, radiochemistry, botany, epidemiology, and more may be involved within a given animal feed analysis laboratory. Given this significant cross-disciplinarity, it's arguably more challenging for software developers creating laboratory informatics solutions like a laboratory information management system (LIMS) that has the breadth to cover the production, R&D, and public health contexts of animal feed testing. In fact, an industry lab performing quality control (QC) work for a company will likely have zero interest in public health reporting functionality, and a LIMS that focuses on QC workflows may be more highly desirable.

That said, this Q&A article will examine LIMS functionality that addresses the needs of all three contexts for animal feed analyses. Understand that the LIMS solution your feed lab may be looking for doesn't require some of the functionality addressed here, particularly in the specialty LIMS requirements section. But also understand the broader context of feed testing and how it highlights some of the challenges of finding a feed testing LIMS that is just right for your lab.