help achieve the new EU Commission’s objectives laid out in the “Green Deal” towards carbon-neutral livestock and aquaculture production in Europe.
The European feed industry has been a long-time investor in research and development and has provided innovative animal nutrition solutions to farmers by., helping them address the challenge of climate change. FEFAC’s members are recognized world leaders in resource efficiency and applied animal nutrition science, upgrading and converting low-value co-products of the food and biofuel industry into high-value foodstuffs of animal origin (e.g. meat, dairy, eggs and fish).
FEFAC president, Nick Major, highlighted that the EU livestock and aquaculture sector only represents 10% of all GHG emissions in the EU. He recalled that feed production and products of animal origin are an essential component of sustainable food systems. “Farm animals, including fish, consume 86% “non-human edible” feeding stuffs, according to FAO, meaning the feed sector plays a key part in a truly circular economy by keeping and upgrading nutrients present in a vast range of co-products, like sunflower and rape meal, sugarbeet pulp and molasses, brewers grains and wheat bran,” said Major.
FEFAC and its members have invested heavily in new product environmental footprint measurement tools (PEFCR Feed for Food-Producing Animals) and feed LCA databases (EC Feed database and the GFLI Database). Major stressed that by entering the age of big data management and artificial intelligence, the industry will be able to further improve its environmental performance by closing nutrient cycles and reducing GHG emissions, while improving biodiversity, thus allowing livestock farming and aquaculture to be part of the solution in tackling climate change.
FEFAC members are developing the Feed Sustainability Charter 2030, setting out five key ambitions with additional industry commitments, which will sustain the EU’s holistic approach of sustainable food systems within the “Green Deal” package. The charter will be adopted and published at the XXIX FEFAC Congress in Antwerp on June 4, 2020.
Download the FEFAC Green Deal contribution here.
