Three more schemes offering responsible soy products to the European feed market have successfully passed the independent benchmarking process against the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021. The newly added schemes are Bunge Pro-S, CSQA (Italy) and USSEC SSAP. This brings the total number to fifteen responsible soy schemes which are compliant with the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021, showing the high interest of supply chain partners to strengthen and support the European feed industry’s efforts to foster the mainstream market transformation of the use of responsibly produced soy products.
All fifteen benchmarked schemes also comply with the specific desired criterion on conversion-free soy, meaning they offer responsibly produced soy grown on land that didn’t come at the expense of any (illegal or legal) conversion of natural eco-systems (i.e. including non-forest native vegetation in the Cerrado Biome) as from a certain cut-off date (2020 as the latest possibility). Using the filter system in the FEFAC-ITC Soy Benchmarking Tool, the current learning is that conversion-free soy is made available by schemes with a cut-off date of 2008/2009 or for the years 2016-2020. It can also be observed that thirteen out of fifteen schemes offer conversion-free soy on at least a Mass Balance chain of custody basis.
“The experience shows that FEFAC is fully delivering on its ambition to provide market transparency on the availability of conversion-free soy, with numerous schemes taking inspiration from the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021 to amend or formulate new requirements in this aspect. With a view to the announced European Commission proposal for deforestation-free supply chains and the COP26 pledge to end deforestation by 2030, we have demonstrated that the soy supply chain is ready to deliver a mainstream market supply of responsible and conversion-free soy to the European feed sector. In the interest of effective sourcing strategies and cost-efficient logistical processes, we ask the European Commission and other policymakers to carefully consider the constructive role certification schemes and programs can play to ascertain the conformity of conversion-free soy in a credible way that alleviates administrative burdens, as well as to maintain all existing chain of custody models (e.g. book & claim, area mass balance, mass balance & product segregation), which all serve their purpose to respond to market demand and product specifications,” said FEFAC president, Asbjørn Børsting.
Compliance with the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021 means that the schemes meet the criteria for responsible soy production that are included in the FEFAC Guidelines, which were developed to set a transparent “comparison level” for European compound feed manufacturers requested to source responsible soy. Several more schemes have applied in the meantime for benchmarking against the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021, which is currently being executed by ITC.
