About Teklad > Fixed Formulation
 

The Essentials

Diets containing natural ingredients such as corn, wheat, or soybean meal have been utilized since the dawn of laboratory animal science.  A diet fed to a laboratory animal involved in scientific research must provide proper nutrients to support all normal physiological processes.  This will ensure that animals are maintained in proper health throughout the duration of the study.    However, beyond this role the diet should have minimal impact on treatment effects and should not influence the interpretation of research results.  Therefore, it is critical that batch to batch variation be kept to a minimum.  Harlan Teklad achieves this through careful selection and monitoring of diet ingredients, ingredient suppliers, the use of established, standardized and carefully monitored manufacturing procedures, and the use of Fixed Formulas when manufacturing diets.

The Problem
           
Many diet manufacturers frequently adjust their formulations according to variation in nutrient concentrations of the available raw materials.  For example, a decrease in the protein content of soybean meal would require an increase in the amount of soybean meal in a formula, in an attempt to keep the protein content constant.  While this formula change might serve to keep this one nutrient (protein) constant, this change will leave all other nutrients to chance.  Soybean meal, like most natural ingredients contains protein, fat, fiber, carbohydrate, vitamins, and minerals.  A change in the amount of soybean meal will change the amounts of all the other nutrients in the diet.  In addition, natural ingredients like soybean meal contain non-nutrients which have biological activity such as phytoestrogens.  A change in the amount of soybean meal in a diet, will also change the amount of these non-nutrients in the diet, which might affect study results.  Feed manufacturers who alter their formulas in this way, put research at risk because investigators are unaware of the specific adjustments to the formula and therefore are unaware of a potential research variable.

The Harlan Teklad Promise   

Researchers can be certain that diets obtained from Harlan Teklad will always be made using fixed formulas. Ingredients are not added, removed or the inclusion rates altered due to cost, convenience, or to adjust for ingredient variability.  Using fixed formulas, Harlan Teklad laboratory animal diets provide complete and balanced nutrition while minimizing variation in nutrients and non-nutrients which otherwise might compromise a research study.