INSPECTION OF COMMERCIAL FEEDSTUFFS 35 



Screenings 



As Screenings Investigator for the Association of American Feed Control 

 Officials, the Official Chemist has made an extensive study of screenings. 



About 100 samples of various kinds of screenings were received from the 

 screenings industry and from other state control officials. These samples, aa 

 well as those taken in Massachusetts, were analyzed both chemically and micro- 

 scopically by the Feed Control Service. The results are presented in the tables 

 following this article. 



The data obtained in this study indicate that the present official and tentative 

 screenings definitions adopted by our control association should be revised. 



The control official should have the answers to four questions before he can 

 decide whether the sale of a particular lot of screenings should be permitted. 

 These are: 



1. Does it have value as a feed? 



2. Does it contain viable weed seeds? 



3. Does it contain any material that is injurious to animals or that 

 wiU have detrimental effect on the quality of their milk or flesh? 



4. Is it properly labelled? 



It must be recognized that screenings is a mixture. A large percentage of the 

 screenings handled by the screenings industry is marketed finally as blended 

 screenings. Heavy grain and seed screenings are usually mixed with light weight 

 chaffy screenings to produce a medium weight screenings that may contain the 

 screenings from several kinds of grains and/or seeds. Therefore, most screenings 

 are heterogenous mixtures consisting of different kinds of grains and /or seeds, 

 hulls, chaff, weed seeds, and usually some sand and dirt. A study of the data 

 given in the table indicates that some of the screenings even before blending are 

 totally unlike in composition although labelled the same. For example, there 

 are two lots of 44-pound Flax Screenings. One lot consists of 9 percent grains 

 and seeds, 83 per cent weed seeds, and 8 percent hulls, chaff, dirt and sand. 

 The other lot contains 79 percent grains and seeds, only 19 percent weed seeds, 

 and 2 percent hulls, chaff, sand and dirt. Obviously, the name Flax Screenings 

 cannot describe both lots correctly. The word "flax" used for describing the 

 first lot is almost meaningless. 



Because this condition applies also to the other types of screenings, it seems 

 logical to apply the term Mixed Screenings to most of the screenings used and to 

 allow the protein, fiber, and ash guarantees to indicate the quality. 



The word "refuse" should be eliminated. According to the dictionary, the 

 word "refuse" means waste or worthless matter, trash, rubbish. Used as an 

 adjective it means rejected or worthless. 



In a sense, particularly when looked at from the flour milling, malt, or oatmeal 

 production angles, screenings is rejected material. But neither the feed manu- 

 facturers nor those engaged in livestock production consider the screenings now 

 called refuse screenings either worthless or material fit only for rejection. The 

 hundreds of thousands of tons of this product that are used annually for feeding 

 purposes attest to this fact. 



