The Food and Drug Administration will not take actions in its animal feed rule to discourage the use of spent grains, the by-products of alcoholic beverage brewing and distilling that are very commonly used as animal feed, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine Michael Taylor said today.


Michael Taylor
“We understand how the language we used in our proposed rule could lead to the misperception that we are proposing to require human food manufacturers to establish separate animal feed safety plans and controls to cover their by-products, but it was never our intent to do so. In fact, we invited comment on practical ways to address by-products in keeping with their minimal potential risk,” Taylor wrote in a blog post.

“We will take the necessary steps to clarify our intent in the rules themselves so there can be no confusion.”

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, who had introduced legislation to block FDA’s action, said in a news release, “The FDA has gotten the message, loud and clear, that this is a perfectly safe practice and should be allowed to continue. They have even acknowledged that it just doesn’t make sense to create strict new food safety rules that would end this age-old practice.”

“The conversations we’ve had with FDA over the last year give us reason to be cautiously optimistic that the amended rule expected this summer will allow brewers to continue to market spent grains in the same safe, swift and sanitary manner we have been,” said Chris Thorne, a spokesman for the Beer Institute.

“This is a practice that has gone on for centuries — literally since man began brewing beer — without any recorded incident of human health risk,” Thorne said.

▪ Food and Drug Administration — Getting it Right on Spent Grains