A new era of protein production in Europe

As an association, FEFAC wants to be the voice of the European compound feed and premix industry. In that sense, our main challenge is to engage the current and potential new members in the common targets for the feed industry in Europe, defining our statements in a way that makes the members feel comfortable. Our purpose is to give more value to what we do as a responsible and essential activity, highly regulated and controlled, as well as to what we contribute to society in terms of employment, sustainability, circularity, support for livestock and aquaculture production, which is our reason for being and a key element for life in rural areas, and therefore our contribution to the production chain of safe, healthy, and nutritious food for the people.

I am deeply convinced that we should be aligned and well-coordinated not only internally but also with the rest of the players in the food chain (suppliers, farmers, etc.) to give a common message. This common message has more strength and is heard more clearly by both policymakers and the rest of society. Part of our mission is to contribute to the development of harmonized and reasonable regulatory frameworks. Through a true cross-sectoral partnership in close cooperation with policymakers, we should go one step up. That means increasing the productivity and sustainability of our activities, collecting and managing data to determine our impact using a fact-based approach, and implementing actions to go into a new era of protein production in Europe. All the initiatives to reduce our impact and external dependency are more than welcome. Innovation is more relevant than ever, as we should speed up the solutions. This is something that takes time and needs public and private resources and legislative support, but is doable.

Sustainability and circularity are two of the main topics in which we want to be very active. FEFAC has a great opportunity to play a relevant role by providing tools and support together with our supply chain partners, which will enable the EU livestock and aquaculture sector to achieve most of the relevant objectives of the EU sustainability expectations. However, this cannot imply a radical reduction or elimination of animal protein production. We must contribute to implementing the best production practices that are sustainable, not only from an environmental point of view but also from a socioeconomic perspective. Europe should not repeat mistakes from the past, where production sectors were simply exported and import dependency increased. In that sense, FEFAC welcomes the Open Strategic Autonomy proposed during the Spanish Presidency, which was well received in the Granada Declaration by all the member states. 2023 was a year of transition, with a number of achievements at the global level, like COP28, and at the European level, the adoption of important legal acts such as the deforestation regulation, which is a breakthrough in the way the EU wants to position itself in sustainable trade development while looking for EU strategic autonomy.

2023 saw FEFAC taking a step in the implementation of the FEFAC Feed Sustainability Charter 2023, which was published in 2020, with the publication “Advanced Animal Feed Strategies to Support the Transition towards More Sustainable and Circular Livestock and Aquaculture Production”. The objective is to facilitate access for chain partners and decision-makers to sound scientific-based information on the techniques themselves, how they work, and for which species, as well as some considerations on the economic impacts and trade-offs. Practical case studies showcasing existing animal feeding strategies are now available online on the FEFAC website.

Regarding circularity, we should recognize that the feed industry is always at the forefront of the circular economy and the optimization of available resources. There are some fundamental aspects on which the sector should focus.

First, to communicate as much as possible about the “circular” concept. Co-products are the resulting feed materials derived from a process where the main activity is geared towards the production of a different consumer product, such as beverages, food, biofuels, or other industrial applications. Their existence is an unavoidable consequence of the lead process, but they are nonetheless extremely valuable in animal nutrition. The European feed industry takes great pride in the knowledge, understanding, and technical capacity that it has built up on how to recover nutrients from these non-human edible materials. Linked to this approach to human inedible feed, FEFAC has highlighted the role of the compound feed sector in the circular economy thanks to the use of co-products. Using it, the compound feed sector makes a fundamental contribution to sustainable food systems, reducing food waste along the supply chain and keeping valuable nutrients that would otherwise be lost. This is a concept that our grandparents knew very well and that our industry develops professionally, ensuring the nutritional value, quality, and safety of these co-products.

Secondly, FEFAC invites regulators to proceed with a systematic review of legislative bottlenecks in the EU regulatory framework that currently restrict a higher level of circularity in EU food systems through innovative animal nutrition solutions that can benefit sustainability targets.

Last but not least, we should highlight that the role of the animal nutrition industry and livestock sectors in the circular economy, with their capacity to absorb residual biomass from other (industrial) food and non-food sectors, should not enter into competition with the efforts to enhance the sustainability of energy production with the use of advanced biofuels that can impact the competitive access of the feed sector to residual biomass flows in the future. This is particularly relevant due to the current circumstances of the Ukraine war’s impacts on energy costs in the EU.

FEFAC also raised further attention to the possibly conflicting dynamics between increased biomethane production and increased circular feed availability. Due to stimulation policies, there is a perceived risk that there are financial incentives that divert the resources we consider circular feed towards biomethane production as a form of renewable energy. FEFAC has initiated discussions with a wide variety of stakeholders to discuss the development of an EU biomass factsheet and to bring more transparency to the discussion.

There are other relevant topics or bottlenecks on which we also want to be very active. In July 2023, the European Commission published its proposal on the NGTs regulation, amending the current one from 2017. In principle, FEFAC welcomes the differentiation of conventional-like NGTs from classical GMOs and the exemption from authorization and labelling requirements for a group of those NGT plants (category 1) for which no risk assessment has to be made and they can be labelled in the same way as conventional plants. This is a relevant advance, but we are still concerned by the practical enforcement of the proposed measures for another group of them (category 2), in particular those for which no method of detection is available, and, in addition to that, the use of the NGT´s in organic production. However, it remains a sensitive topic, with a lot of resistance from some civil society organizations. We will need academic experts to proactively engage in the public debate to demonstrate the benefits of what these kinds of innovations can offer to be able to see a favourable political environment develop in favour of a political agreement that indeed would allow NGTs in European agriculture to make a positive contribution.

The EU feed market in 2023 reflected continued political and market crisis management pressures and a growing demand for providing sustainable feed solutions to address market dynamics and regulatory considerations. These trends are a response to the adverse impacts of climate change on the supply of raw materials, such as droughts and floods, and on animal production capacity, including Avian Influenza (AI) and African Swine Fever (ASF). Additionally, national policies ranging from greenhouse gas reduction goals to nitrate emission regulations have contributed to these shifts.

In these six months as president, many challenging things have happened in our market due to geopolitical matters, climate change impacts, etc. The current situation in the Ukraine war, the instability and uncertainty of the markets, some potential disruptions (one more) in the supply of certain raw materials or products due to the recent conflicts in the Middle East, EU regulations that impact our sector or related sectors, and the extremely high pressure on animal production, among others, are important enough reasons to dedicate time to all of them. Together with the FEFAC team and our colleagues in the different bodies of the association, we will try to improve our support for this strategic sector for the benefit of our EU citizens.