Turning Food Waste to Animal Feed: Your Guide to the Laws and Regulations

According to Broad Leib, federal laws for using food scraps as animal feed include:

• FDA’s Ruminant Feed Ban Rule, which prohibits using animal tissue in feeds for ruminant animals, such as cows.
• FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine regulations of animal food products, which state that animal feed cannot be filthy or decomposed, be packaged or held under unsanitary conditions, or contain any poisonous or deleterious substance.
• FDA’s Final Rule for Preventive Controls for Animal Food, which aims to prevent foodborne illness at the processing stage of food production by requiring certain licensure and practices in facilities that process animal feed.
• The federal Swine Health Protection Act, administered by USDA, which aims to ensure that food scraps for swine are free of disease by requiring that meat and animal byproduct-containing food scraps are heat-treated to kill disease-causing bacteria.

State laws vary widely among states. The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic’s 2016 report, Leftovers for Livestock: A Legal Guide for Using Excess Food as Animal Feed, provides information about the restrictions on feeding food scraps to animals in all states, and also outlines federal laws and sharing policy recommendations.

A Closer Look

FDA’s regulation of animal food falls under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, which, in part, requires businesses to register as food facilities. Types of businesses that need to register include those that manufacture, process, pack, or hold food (human and animal) for consumption in the United States unless an exemption applies, says Jennifer Erickson, JD, lead, Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Preventive Controls for Animal Food Regulation at FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine in Rockville, Md.

Some businesses that send food waste to farms may be exempt from registering as a food facility, such as restaurants and grocery stores. These businesses are subject to the FD&C Act but don’t have to register or follow the additional FSMA regulations for animal food, which only apply to facilities registered as food facilities, when sending food waste to the animal food supply, Erickson says. But these businesses are subject to the parts of the FD&C Act that apply to all businesses handling animal food—such as the adulteration and misbranding provisions—even if they don’t have to meet specific FSMA requirements. Other requirements, such as the Swine Health Protection Act or other state or local requirements, may apply depending on their activities.

Businesses that are required to register with FDA as a food facility are subject to the Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Food for Animals requirements in 21 CFR part 507, more commonly referred to as the Preventive Controls for Animal Food (PCAF) requirements. There are three ways the requirements can apply, Erickson says, depending on the activities that businesses perform on their byproducts:

1. Facilities that don’t further manufacture/process their human food byproducts for use as animal food only have to follow the limited holding and distribution of current good manufacturing practice requirements.
2. Facilities that only perform certain manufacturing/processing activities as outlined in FDA’s guidance for industry must only follow CGMP requirements in 21 CFR part 507, subpart B.
3. Facilities that perform more complex manufacturing/processing activities must follow both CGMP and Preventative Control requirements, unless another exemption applies.

Additional information on these requirements is contained in Draft Guidance for Industry #239: Human Food By-Products for Use as Animal Food. “But this draft guidance is partially outdated because it was issued prior to the guidance for industry outlining when certain manufacturing/processing activities have to only follow CGMP requirements,” Erickson says.

Additionally, FDA has a fact sheet for safely distributing human food waste for use as animal food. “While this resource was developed primarily to assist facilities during COVID-19, the same food safety principles apply whenever human food waste is sent to animal food,” Erickson says.