The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) has given the green light to hempseed meal, a byproduct of hemp oil production, as a feed ingredient for laying hens. This approval, announced during AAFCO’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, comes after years of effort by U.S. hemp industry stakeholders.
Hempseed meal, often referred to as hempseed “cake,” is set to be tentatively listed later this year in AAFCO’s official publication, which serves as a regulatory guide for the feed industry. This tentative listing will enable individual states to begin adopting hempseed meal commercially for poultry feed.
The approval process wasn’t without challenges. The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance (CHTA) and the European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) had raised concerns, advocating for different THC and CBD limits in hempseed meal. However, AAFCO set the final standards with a limit of 2 parts-per-million (ppm) for THC and 20 ppm for CBD, diverging from the proposals of these groups. Despite these objections, U.S. hemp feed advocates succeeded in securing the approval, as reported by Hemp Today.
This decision is particularly significant for the U.S. poultry industry, where approximately 20,000 family farmers, under production contracts, are responsible for nearly 95% of broiler production. These farms, along with a smaller number of company-owned and independent farms, produced over 9.4 billion broiler chickens in 2023, yielding 62 billion pounds of poultry.
The U.S. poultry industry is the largest in the world, with 46.4 billion pounds of chicken products marketed last year. Once hempseed meal receives final validation as a feedstock from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, it could influence both domestic and global markets. This approval is especially relevant as Americans lead the world in chicken consumption, reaching 101.1 pounds per capita in 2023.
