INTERVIEW FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE August 2024 65 quality and payable food. I think the last one in particular is very important because people with lower incomes should also have access to healthy and good food. As a feed industry, we are focusing on by-products that reduce methane emissions and use less energy, especially in ruminants. We think the feed ratio needs to be better than it is now and we are in favor of innovations that will enable this. As an industry, we are trying to increase our contribution to this process by selecting the right raw materials and feed ingredients that are well digestible and ensuring that feed is used efficiently. The fact that officials at the Ministry of Agriculture support this idea gives us hope that the feed sector can continue to contribute to climate goals. But it is also unacceptable that the entire responsibility for this process, which imposes additional costs on farmers, is placed on the agriculture sector. Politicians have been saying for years that money is not everything. "We should take care of future generations, we have to look after the environment and nature," they say. And they are right when, indeed, environment and nature are separate from farming. But in the opinion of the feed sector, and my personal opinion, farmers are a part of nature and the environment. So of course, farmers have to contribute to achieving goals in this area too. But it is not realistic to put all the burden on them. This could lead to the destruction of your agri-food complex. What can you say about animal welfare? We know that this issue is being raised more and more, especially by European consumers. Animal welfare is another high-profile issue in the Netherlands and in Europe. In our parliament and especially in some groups in society, there are important questions about the conditions in which animals are kept and fed. There are different ways of approaching this issue. First of all, anything we do in feed and everything we change has possibly a high-cost impact. So, the big question is: if we produce feed in the future with a higher cost, how is the farm going to pay for it? This is a big and interesting issue because we also talk about chain initiatives in the market. For example, if you want to buy the meat of animals that have been fed with regional raw materials or soy-free feed, or if you want to buy free-range chicken eggs, you have to be aware that this will have a higher climate impact. The more space you give to the chicken, the higher the climate impact. So how do we deal with that? When you have a higher cost, who is going to pay for it? The only thing we can think of is if there is a demand from the market, someone has to pay for it and that's the consumer. The feed sector, farmers, the processing industry, retailers... In short, every partner in this production chain wants to make money because they are all enterprises. The farmer is often left with the bill for this whole process. The farmer has to deal with lower income and higher costs. This is a really big problem. And I think with all our efforts on feed, we have to find a solution to that. Because if you don't have many healthy farms in Europe, you can't say you have a healthy feed sector. And if you want a healthy feed sector or a healthy 'agri-food complex' in the Netherlands, you need a critical number of companies. And of course, these companies need a certain amount of money to run their business. Can you tell us a bit about Nevedi's sustainability goals and the Sustainable Animal Feed 2030 project? A few years ago, we launched the Sustainability Charter 2030 on European level with FEFAC. As a part of it, we have a sustainability policy, as well as a manager dedicated to sustainability. And recently, we launched the monitor on sustainable feed. Nowadays everybody talks about sustainable feed, but nobody has a real definition. If you ask 10 people, you will get 10 different definitions. So, two years ago, we made a measurable definition of what sustainable feed is. Because a definition that cannot be measured is an unstable definition. In addition, we created a system to measure 4 indicators that are related to sustainable feed and to convert it to
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