The Shandong Feed Industry Association has approved and published T/SDFA 055-2026, _Feed Additive — Sodium Hyaluronate_, a group standard led by Focusfreda. The standard will take effect on October 1, 2026.
The new standard addresses a long-standing gap in unified requirements for feed-additive sodium hyaluronate. It provides a common technical basis for product quality control, testing, and conformity assessment, marking an important step toward more standardized use of sodium hyaluronate in pet food and animal nutrition.
Why a Sodium Hyaluronate Feed Additive Standard Was Needed
In 2018, Announcement No. 21 of China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs added sodium hyaluronate to the feed additive catalogue for use in dog and cat feed. Since then, the application of sodium hyaluronate in the pet sector has expanded.
However, the industry had long lacked a unified standard. Manufacturers, purchasers, testing organizations, and quality teams therefore lacked a consistent technical basis for production, procurement, testing, and quality determination, creating challenges for standardized industry development.
To address this need, Focusfreda worked with 21 organizations, including the Shandong Provincial Animal Product Quality and Safety Center, the Qufu Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Development Center, Shandong Seek Pet Products Co., Ltd., Gambol Pet Group, Jiangnan University, and Mérieux NutriSciences, and formally began drafting the group standard in 2025.
How T/SDFA 055-2026 Was Developed
The drafting process covered project initiation, market research, sample collection, experimental verification, and data evaluation. Industry opinions were widely solicited, and the technical provisions went through multiple rounds of revision and refinement.
The standard ultimately passed expert review and completed the approval and publication process.
What the Standard Means for Pet Food and Animal Nutrition
Once implemented, T/SDFA 055-2026 will provide a unified technical basis for the use of sodium hyaluronate in pet food and animal nutrition.
For upstream manufacturers, the standard provides a reference for organizing production and quality control. For pet food companies, it can reduce communication and testing costs caused by the previous lack of a unified standard during raw material procurement, incoming inspection, and formulation design. For testing organizations, it provides unified methods for inspection and conformity assessment.
By standardizing product quality requirements and testing systems, the standard is expected to help reduce disorderly competition and move feed-additive sodium hyaluronate from a stage of “products without a common standard” toward a more standardized framework in which production and quality evaluation can follow shared technical requirements.
Focusfreda's Next Steps
As the lead drafting organization, Focusfreda will continue to promote communication and interpretation of the standard for customers and industry partners.
The company will also work with upstream and downstream enterprises, universities, and testing organizations to collect application and testing data that can support future revisions of the standard. Focusfreda will continue to advance the standardized application of sodium hyaluronate in pet food and animal nutrition and support high-quality industry development through standardization.
