AAFCO Votes Yes on Hemp Seed Meal for Laying Hens
The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) voted at their annual meeting on Aug. 7 to approve hemp seed meal for laying hens as a ‘Tentative Ingredient Definition,’ allowing the material to now be used in commercial feed.
This vote is the first federal approval for any hemp ingredient to be used for commercial animal feed and is the culmination of more than four years of work by the Hemp Feed Coalition, a national organization founded and operated to support the research and applications necessary to consider hemp as a new animal feed ingredient.
While hemp seed ingredients such as hemp hearts, hemp protein and hemp seed oil have been legal for human consumption and in the marketplace for over 20 years, they have not previously been approved for feeding to animals.
Hemp Feed Coalition leaders Morgan Tweet and Andrew Bish were in attendance at the vote in Texas, and Lancaster Farming spoke to them moments after the meeting ended.
Tweet said she was prepared to answer questions, supply additional data, and otherwise defend the ingredient definition. The need to do that never happened, she said.
“It was actually very anticlimactic,” she said. “It passed really quickly.”
Bish said this is a tremendous opportunity for farmers.
“This is the first real pull on the hemp market, and it represents rotational crop opportunities for producers,” he said. “And that’s what I’m all about is finding those opportunities.”
Passage of the AAFCO definition as ‘tentative’ allows the ingredient to be used in commerce in those states that recognize the ingredient in that stage of definition. The process to fully adopt it into the official AAFCO registry of ingredients will not start until the next meeting later this year.
“It has been a long road to get here over the past 4 years and we are excited to finally be making progress and able to introduce this ingredient into a feed product,” Tweet said.
She said that hemp seeds contain superior nutrition attributes, including protein containing all 21 amino acids and has an optimal balanced Omega 6:3 ratio of 3 to 1 and has shown to increase the omegas and nutrients in the egg.
Tweet is also the CEO of IND HEMP in Montana.
IND HEMP manufactures a line of farm and ranch products under the brand Hemptana, which now includes a feed product for laying hens.
