4 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE February 2024 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 A NEW ERA OF PROTEIN PRODUCTION IN EUROPE Pedro Luis Cordero Castillo FEFAC President CESFAC (Spain) Vice-President LEAD ARTICLE
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