USGC Leads DDGS Recertification Effort

The U.S. Grains Council is planning to work with Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to register new, low-oil/fat distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS) for feed use in Japan. A technical team from Japan is now visiting the U.S. to assess the reformulated DDGS and coordinate with the registration effort.

â€œJapan is our top international partner,â€� said Tommy Hamamoto, USGCâ€™s Country Director in Japan. â€œLast year, in terms of U.S. exports, Japan was number one for corn and number six for DDGS. We have excellent relationships with MAFF, and we are looking forward to working closely with them to make sure re-registration proceeds smoothly.â€�

All feed ingredients used in Japan must be registered with MAFF and appropriately labeled for nutritional content. The existing DDGS registration includes a tolerance level to accommodate routine, naturally occurring variations in the products. The recent trend by ethanol plants to extract commercially valuable oils from DDGS, however, is yielding a product with significantly lower oil/fat content that is likely to exceed existing tolerance levels. This requires that reduced oil/fat DDGS be tested and re-registered as a new product.

The Council is in the process of contracting for feeding trials and analytical testing to meet MAFFâ€™s registration requirements.

â€œIf all goes smoothly, and we expect that it will, we will accomplish the re-registration this year without any disruptions to this valuable trading relationship,â€� Hamamoto said.