Batch Tracking for Pet Food & Pet Supplements Using Veeqo

The Challenge: Pet Food Recalls and Compliance Requirements

If you're selling pet food, dog treats, cat food, or pet supplements through Veeqo, you're facing critical regulatory challenges: FDA and AAFCO require lot-level traceability for pet food products. Without automated batch tracking, you risk compliance violations, failed audits, delayed recalls, and shipping expired products that could harm pets.

The pet food industry sees frequent recalls — in 2023-2024, the FDA issued over 40 pet food recall notices for Salmonella, Listeria, mycotoxins, vitamin imbalances, and foreign objects. These recalls almost always affect specific manufacturing lots, not entire product lines. Without batch-level traceability, you can't identify which customers received affected products.

Why Pet Food Sellers Need Batch Tracking

Pet food and pet supplement sellers face unique inventory challenges:

• FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires lot traceability for pet food
• AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) requires proper lot coding
• Pet food recalls happen frequently and affect specific production lots
• Pet owners expect products with long shelf life remaining (12-18 months)
• Expired pet food creates health hazards for animals and regulatory violations
• 10-15% of pet food inventory typically expires before selling (industry average)

TraceLot solves these challenges by adding batch and lot tracking with expiry management directly into your Veeqo workflow. No manual spreadsheets, no compliance gaps, no expired pet food shipments.

How TraceLot Works for Pet Food Sellers

TraceLot integrates with Veeqo to provide FDA-ready batch and lot tracking without changing your existing workflow:

1. Connect your Veeqo account using OAuth integration (takes 2 minutes)
2. Import your pet food products that need batch tracking and expiry management (kibble, treats, wet food, supplements)
3. Create batches with manufacturer lot codes, best-by dates, and production dates when receiving inventory from suppliers or co-manufacturers
4. FEFO automatically assigns batches to every Veeqo order (earliest-expiring batch ships first, maintaining freshness)
5. Get daily expiry alerts for batches approaching expiration (30, 60, 90 days) to run promotions and prevent waste
6. Maintain complete traceability showing which lot number went to which customer order — critical for recalls

FEFO: Shipping Fresh Pet Food First

Pet owners are particularly sensitive to expiry dates. Receiving dog food that expires in 2 months when they expected 12+ months triggers returns and negative reviews. Pet food health is serious — owners want the freshest products for their pets.

FEFO (First-Expired-First-Out) solves this by automatically shipping products with the shortest shelf life first, but they're still fresh — just the oldest of your fresh stock. This systematic rotation prevents both expired shipments and customer complaints.

Example: You have Batch A (best-by Dec 2025) and Batch B (best-by June 2025). FEFO ships Batch B first, ensuring you sell through inventory before expiration while still giving pet owners 12+ months of shelf life.

Pet Food Recalls: Speed Saves Lives

Pet food recalls are time-critical emergencies. Contaminated food, pathogen detection, or mycotoxin issues require identifying every affected pet owner within hours to prevent animal illness or death.

Without batch tracking, this requires manually reviewing thousands of orders, checking receiving records, and hoping your spreadsheets are accurate. It can take days — time you don't have when pets' health is at risk.

With TraceLot, it takes 5 minutes. Search for the affected manufacturer lot code, and instantly see every order that included it. Export the customer list, begin outreach immediately, and provide FDA with complete traceability records — all from a single query. This protects pets and demonstrates regulatory compliance.

Tracking Different Package Sizes from Same Production Lot

Many pet food sellers offer the same formula in multiple sizes (5lb, 15lb, 30lb bags of kibble, or 3oz/6oz/12oz cans of wet food). All these package sizes come from the same production lot and share the same best-by date.

TraceLot tracks at the lot level, not the package level. When you receive a production run from your manufacturer, you create one batch with the lot code and best-by date. All package sizes draw from this batch, maintaining perfect traceability across variants while keeping Veeqo inventory accurate for each SKU.

Private Label & Co-Manufacturing Scenarios

Many pet food brands work with co-manufacturers or contract packagers. You might use different facilities for different product lines, or switch manufacturers seasonally. Each facility has its own quality control standards and risk profiles.

TraceLot lets you track manufacturer and facility information in batch records. If one co-manufacturer has a quality issue (contamination, formulation error, packaging defect), you can instantly identify which batches came from that facility and take action. This is critical for protecting your brand when you don't control manufacturing.

Pet Supplements: Additional Compliance Requirements

Pet supplements (vitamins, joint support, probiotics, CBD for pets) have additional compliance requirements beyond standard pet food:

• FDA regulations similar to human dietary supplements (21 CFR 111 for quality systems)
• Potency guarantees that degrade over time (probiotics, enzymes, vitamins)
• Batch-specific lab testing results (potency, purity, contaminants)
• Stricter shelf life expectations from pet owners (supplements lose efficacy near expiration)
• State-specific regulations for CBD and hemp-based pet products

TraceLot's batch records accommodate all these requirements: store lab testing results, potency data, and compliance documentation for each production lot, creating audit-ready records for FDA inspections.

Reducing Pet Food Waste with Expiry Forecasting

Pet food write-offs are expensive. A 30lb bag of premium kibble costs $60-$80 wholesale. Expiring 100 units = $6,000-$8,000 in lost product. Scale that across multiple SKUs and it adds up fast.

TraceLot's expiry forecasting prevents this. The system analyzes 30-day order velocity for each batch and forecasts which batches are at risk of expiring before they sell. You receive daily email alerts for batches expiring in 30, 60, or 90 days, giving you time to run flash sales, bundle deals, or donate to animal shelters instead of writing off expired inventory.