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

Under federal law, food waste containing meat or animal products can generally be fed to animals (except ruminants). The Swine Health Protection Act requires that these scraps be heat treated in a manner sufficient to kill disease-causing bacteria before they can be fed to swine, Broad Leib says. In practice, this generally means that most animal-based food waste must be heated at a boiling temperature for at least 30 minutes by someone who holds a valid license or permit for the treatment. Some foods are exempt from the half-hour boiling protocol, including certain food scraps containing animal products that were industrially processed or manufactured.

Changes in Laws

FDA regulation of animal feed has become more restrictive since the 1980s, when several disease outbreaks were linked to animal feed. These include foot-and-mouth disease in swine and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly referred to as mad cow disease). For example, FDA’s Ruminant Feed Ban Rule, promulgated in 1997, prohibits the use of mammalian protein in feeds for ruminant animals. Under this rule, producers of waste-based ruminant feed must certify compliance and keep detailed records of their inputs and processes, Broad Leib says.

The FSMA also made big changes to the food safety procedures for all food processing, including processing of animal feed, Broad Leib says. For example, this law requires more regular FDA inspections and requires all processing facilities to create a hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls (HARPC) plan for a facility’s safety procedures.

During and after the rulemaking process establishing the requirements in 21 CFR part 507 under the FSMA, FDA had multiple interactions with stakeholders to ensure that the requirements reflected the practices that many were already using to ensure that the food waste they sent to animal food was safe and not adulterated, Erickson says. The requirements were also written so that human food facilities that already controlled food safety hazards for human food didn’t have duplicative requirements for controlling those hazards in animal food byproducts.

Regulations for Different Animals

The regulations and adulteration provisions in the FD&C Act are the same for all animal food; however, because food safety hazards affect species differently, what is necessary to produce a safe, unadulterated animal food in compliance with the regulations and the FD&C Act may differ depending on the species, Erickson says.

Most state laws only address the feeding of food scraps to swine, with many requiring heat treatment of all food scraps given to swine, and a few states banning the practice outright. By contrast, only a few states apply regulations to other animals, Broad Leib says. For example, South Dakota doesn’t regulate the feeding of food scraps to swine, but it does ban the feeding of any kind of food scraps to cattle enrolled in the South Dakota Certified Beef Program. There are fewer regulations regarding feeding food scraps to poultry, although the laws regulating facilities that produce animal feed still apply to facilities that produce feed for poultry.

Fairfield says that different animals have disparate requirements because the physiologies of animal species can cause varied responses to the same contaminant or nutrient. For instance, sheep have a daily requirement for copper as a nutrient, but excessive copper can easily cause copper toxicity because their bodies have difficulty excreting excess copper. Copper toxicity within other animal species is rare, however, because the physiologies of these animal species are better suited to handle copper excesses.

Labeling Requirements

Under the FD&C Act, food cannot be misbranded, meaning that its labeling cannot be false or misleading in any way, and it must include required information. FDA cooperates with state and local partners—in particular, the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO)—to implement proper labeling to ensure the safe use of feeds, Broad Leib says.