The International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held their 19th annual meeting to further strengthen their collaboration on critical issues to ensure safe, nutritious and sustainable feed and food.
The virtual meeting was officially opened by Badi Besbes, head of Animal Production and Genetic Branch at FAO and Daniel Bercovici, IFIF Chairman, who welcomed IFIF delegates representing over 80% of global compound feed production and reiterated their commitment to this longstanding partnership and agreed to continue to strengthen their work together to tackle the challenges facing the feed and food chain. Besbes reaffirmed the importance of "the collaboration between the public and private sector to support the key role of the livestock sector in reducing hunger and supporting livelihoods worldwide in light of high-level global reflections on sustainable agriculture and food systems.”
Bercovici said that “our joint meeting with the FAO once again underlined our strong partnership as IFIF continues to support key FAO initiatives such as the Feed Safety Multi-Stakeholder Partnership, the Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership and the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock. The publication of the updated IFIF FAO Manual on Good Practices for the Feed Sector was a key milestone this year as we work together on Capacity Development for feed safety. IFIF continues to contribute to FAO’s work to address antimicrobial resistance including through advancing nutritional innovation to support animal health. IFIF looks forward to the 14th International Feed Regulators Meeting (IFRM), which is another great example of IFIF FAO collaboration positively impacting the feed and food chain.”
Bercovici added that “together with the dedicated colleagues at the FAO we contribute to building a solid science-based approach to support safe and sustainable animal nutrition to bring quality and affordable food to a growing world population, producing more with less and even better under diverse production systems. The high quality of exchanges and cooperation towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) continue to build on our achievements and together with all IFIF members I am pleased our relationship continues to strengthen year to year.”
Daniela Battaglia, Animal Production officer at the Animal Production and Health Division of the FAO, said that “FAO and IFIF have a long-standing partnership and this meeting addressed a number of critical issues of common interest, such as the need for capacity development to ensure feed safety and the importance of collaborating to tackle the containment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). FAO is committed to working with the private sector and the feed operators and believes that they can valuably contribute to make the livestock and food sectors more responsible and sustainable and to achieve important goals such as public health, and animal health and welfare.”
