China’s biggest animal feed producer urges Government to halt DDGS investigation

New Hope Group, China’s biggest animal feed producer has urged the government to halt its anti-dumping investigation against exports of US DDGS (distillers' dried grains). Feed industry left out of the loop "The investigation has not consulted the feed industry and only represents the interests of some ethanol producers," Liu Yonghao, the chairman of New Hope stated.

According to a report by Reuters, cheap US DDGS imports brought costs down for feed mills last year and China's investigation which was launched late last year have driven up domestic prices of the by-product, said Liu, a member of the advisory body to the parliament. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.

Antibiotics in DDGS may raise some concerns

Of the distillers grains produced in North America, 90 percent is going into animal feeds with 80 percent of that going into ruminant diets. Now, public concern has arisen over the safety of the product. The reason for this concern is a recent survey of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which found that 53 percent of the US distillers grains (DDGS) sampled had antibiotic residues.

General fear is that these residues could potentially lead to the development of bacterial resistance in animals and eventually also in humans. DDGS are primarily produced through dry or wet milling. In dry milling, the whole grain is milled and used for ethanol production.

Wet milling, on the other hand, separates out all of the grain components and only uses the starch for ethanol production. The remaining portion of the grain is used to create a variety of other marketable products. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.

USGC and China DDGS dumping probe

Three years ago there were virtually no dried distillers grains (DDGS) going to China. Last year there were more than 1.5 million metric tons of DDGS exported to the country and some estimate that the number could be as high as 3 million metric tons at the close of this year. The U.S. Grains Council (USGC) felt that this was the normal progression in trade in a market that is growing exponentially.

However, according to Rebecca Bratter, the USGC director of trade development, it didn’t completely come as a surprise when the China’s Ministry of Commerce has launched an anti-dumping probe into the ethanol co-product DDGS.

The case was initiated on December 28, 2010 and will take at least a year before a decision is made. In the meantime, the interested parties were only given 20 days to register their interest in the case.

“We understand the consequences. We know what’s at stake for registering or not registering,” said Bratter.  “We know this is just the first step in what will be a long process which will include both an injury investigation and on a separate track, a dumping investigation.” Read more...


This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.