6 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2024 The European livestock and feed industry has had to deal with many challenges in recent years: The Covid-19 pandemic, animal diseases such as ASF and avian influenza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increasing legal legislations around sustainability etc. Our industry has been severely affected by all these processes. In particular, I believe that the Covid-19 pandemic was a wake-up call. Covid taught us how to deal with epidemic diseases, how to prevent them, antibiotic resistance and the link between the use of products in animal keeping and such diseases. The wars in Ukraine and Israel have also had serious international consequences. In particular, becoming less dependent on others has been one of the main topics that came to the forefront during this period and has been on the agenda of Europe and many other countries around the world. Today, all continents are talking about their own food and feed security. The European Commission talks about food security, self-sufficiency and getting less dependent. How are you going to do that? What is self-sufficient? And how can we be self-sufficient? For example, in the Netherlands, more than 50% of the raw materials we use in feed production are co-products, which we buy from food companies. There are also foodstuffs that farmers produce on their own farms, such as maize and grass, but these are more limited. About 20% of the rest of the raw materials are imported, 80% of which come from Europe. Soybean meal, which makes up a small amount of the raw materials used, is imported from North and South America. In the end, in the Netherlands, our dependence on imports is dependent on Europe. So, for us, being self-sufficient means being self-sufficient on the European level. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A VERY CLEAR REALITY Even all these developments have not changed the idea that we need to work on climate change goals. Climate change is a very clear reality and now, everyone knows it. Across Europe, there are serious efforts and strict legal regulations to reduce carbon emissions. The new Dutch Minister of Agriculture, who is open to supporting innovation, is focused on the fact that we have to deal with food security as well as climate goals. As a country, we have to align with the European Commission, but we also have to take care of healthy, quality and payable food. I think the latter 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 favour 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 KEY TOPICS IN THE FEED AND LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY FOR EUROPE AND THE NETHERLANDS Henk Flipsen Director Nevedi - The Netherlands Feed Industry Association LEAD ARTICLE
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