The Swine Health Protection Act is intended to protect the people of the United States by ensuring that food waste fed to swine does not contain active disease organisms that pose a risk to domestic swine.

June 26, 2019

2 Min Read
APHIS proposes to amend garbage feeding regulations
Getty Images/Carsten Koall

The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has proprosed to amend the Swine Health Protection Act, which regulates food waste fed to swine and helps ensure that it is properly treated to kill disease causing organisms. APHIS is proposing to amend the garbage feeding regulations and move the lists of State statuses from Code of Federal Regulations to the APHIS website.

Moving the lists to the website would allow APHIS to efficiently update the lists online with an accompanying public notice in the Federal Register. With this proposed change, stakeholders will have immediate access to up-to-date information on changes in status.

APHIS also intends to add the U.S. Virgin Islands to the list of States and territories that permit the feeding of treated garbage to swine after the lists have been moved to the APHIS website. Comments will be considered until August 19, 2019. The documents are available for review here.

The Swine Health Protection Act is intended to protect the commerce, health and welfare of the people of the United States by ensuring that food waste fed to swine does not contain active disease organisms that pose a risk to domestic swine.

Section 166.15 of the regulations contains provisions regarding garbage feeding and enforcement responsibility, with lists of States that are subject to each provision. The regulations contain provisions that regulate food waste containing any meat products fed to swine. Compliance with these regulations ensures that all food waste fed to swine is properly treated to kill disease organisms. Raw or undercooked meat may transmit numerous infectious or communicable diseases to swine, including exotic viral diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, African swine fever, classical swine fever and swine vesicular disease. Under the regulations, food waste containing meat may be fed to swine only if it has been treated to kill disease organisms.

The last change to a State's status in Section 166.15 was made in 2004. Historically, changes to State statuses have been announced through a final rule published in the Federal Register. These final rules, published without an initial proposed rule or comment period, affirmed changes already made by a State to its laws governing the feeding of garbage to swine. Because these rules reflected already completed State actions to their garbage feeding laws, soliciting public comments would not yield additional relevant information.

Source: USDA APHIS, who is solely responsible for the information provided, and wholly owns the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.

Subscribe to Our Newsletters
National Hog Farmer is the source for hog production, management and market news

You May Also Like