When Harvey Ashmead founded Clearfield-based Albion Laboratories in 1956, the company sold veterinary pharmaceuticals to farmers and ranchers, pioneering the idea of selling those products directly to agricultural producers rather than through veterinarians.

The company became the largest maker of vet pharmaceuticals in the western United States, and eventually began producing vitamin and mineral supplements for commercial animal feed.

Most companies would be content with that market niche, but Ashmead and his son, Dr. H. DeWayne Ashmead, now the company's chairman and president, wanted more.

They led the company into metabolic research and the development of more "bioavailable" supplements; that is, products that are more easily absorbed by the body.

Today, Albion has focused on a core business of making patented amino acid chelated materials that are used in human vitamins, medicines and some foods as well as in animal-feed supplements and fertilizers.

The company's groundbreaking research, published by DeWayne Ashmead in scientific journals and magazines, and once controversial, now is accepted widely as standard science.