Director
AFCA-CIAL
A key player in the French animal nutrition sector, AFCA-CIAL has been defending the interests of companies specializing in nutritional supplementation for over 80 years. The aim of supplementation is to improve and balance livestock rations, thereby guaranteeing their well-being and performance. Its 130 member companies include additive suppliers, premix manufacturers and manufacturers of complementary feeds, representing virtually the entire industry in France.
Some key figures for the supplements sector in France:
• 500,000 t of supplements produced
• 40% export sales (EU and non-EU)
• 2 billion euros in sales in France
• 9 000 employees
AFCA-CIAL promotes responsible animal nutrition, involving the companies in safety, health, animal welfare and sustainability. AFCA-CIAL is fully committed to helping its members meet the challenges they face in terms of competitiveness and sovereignty, as well as the challenges of the livestock sector.
AFCA-CIAL has several key missions: regulatory expertise, representing and defending the interests of the profession, and promoting the additives and complements businesses. These missions are carried out at both French and EU level.
Feed safety is a fundamental pillar for companies in the sector. AFCA-CIAL and the other French animal nutrition unions (SNIA and La Coopération Agricole Nutrition Animale) are members of OQUALIM, a French association dedicated to the quality and safety of feed. This association manages certification standard and pooled-self monitoring plans to guarantee feed safety.
Similarly, health nutrition is the founding principle of supplementation. AFCA-CIAL’s mission is to promote nutritional solutions and the expertise of its members. It contributes to facilitating access to the market for effective solutions that strengthen the health and defenses of animals, contribute to improving their well-being, and help limit the use of drugs and reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance. Work is being carried out to provide a framework for the use of claims, with the publication of a good practice guide and the organization of technical days. Compliance with the regulation is essential for the legal security of professionals, the credibility of the sector and the provision of accurate information to users.
The competitiveness of the supplements sector is a key issue for the livestock industry and the European economy. Exports to third countries are an essential part of this competitiveness. AFCA-CIAL, in collaboration with the French authorities, is working to facilitate its members’ collective access to third-country markets; in China in particular, with the opening of the market to additives, premixes and compound feeds in the future. AFCA-CIAL is mobilizing alongside the authorities to remove the import and export sanitary bottlenecks encountered by its members.
Companies in the feed supplements sector are innovators, deploying solutions to meet societal challenges such as climate change, antibiotic resistance and animal welfare. Today, the European regulatory framework is holding back these innovations. AFCA-CIAL is involved in the revision of Regulation 1831/2003 on additives for animal feed. Alongside the European associations FEFAC (Association of European Compound Feed & Premix Industry) and FEFANA (EU Association of Specialty Feed Ingredients and their Mixtures), AFCA-CIAL facilitates and supports the launch of innovative additives on the European market under competitive conditions, while maintaining the same level of safety. Authorization periods, protection of petitioners, a clear framework for third-country exports of additives not authorized in Europe, and the digitization of labels are all essential to ensure the competitiveness of the sector. Despite a timetable that has been postponed several times, AFCA-CIAL urges the European Commission to make the revision of this regulation a priority.
One of the key objectives of the livestock industry is to reduce its environmental impact; with up to 80% of the carbon impact associated with feed, the sector is committed to minimizing its contribution. Animal nutrition provides answers to these decarbonization challenges. To justify the effectiveness of these nutritional solutions, it is essential to measure the impact of products on the environment, from production to rearing, using Life Cycle Analyses (LCA). To implement these LCAs, AFCA-CIAL offers methodological recommendations tailored to the supplements sector. In parallel, with the SNIA and La Coopération Agricole Nutrition Animale, a methodological guide and a certification project for calculating the carbon impact of compound feeds have been drawn up. These documents follow on from work carried out by FEFAC and COPA-COGECA (the united voice of farmers and their cooperatives in the European Union) at European level, notably with professional recommendations for the environmental labeling of compound feeds, endorsed by member states (meeting in the European Commission’s SCoPAFF on Animal Nutrition) through the code of practice for labelling. This work will continue with the establishment of the regulatory framework in Europe and France
AFCA-CIAL, SNIA and La Coopération Agricole Nutrition Animale launched another operational solution to decarbonize livestock farming, with VALORALIM, a scheme for collecting and recycling empty feed packaging from French livestock farmers.
Since 2023, AFCA-CIAL has been taking action to raise public awareness of the sector’s heavy dependence on imports of essential additives from third countries. The situation is not new, but successive recent crises have highlighted it, and the current situation threatens our supplies. The French unions are calling for:
• strengthening and supporting the competitiveness of European production of essential additives,
• recognition of these additives as critical and strategic inputs for the European food chain,
• maintaining international flows, even in the event of a crisis, in order to secure imports on which we are totally dependent.
These actions are also taking place at European level, with work underway within FEFAC, of which AFCA-CIAL is a member through Eurofac (the sole representative of French animal nutrition in Europe, along with SNIA and La Coopération Agricole Nutrition Animale), in line with the Commission’s roadmap for Europe’s strategic autonomy.
In conclusion, animal nutrition professionals are taking numerous initiatives to make French and European livestock farming competitive. Nevertheless, regulatory changes are needed to bring them to fruition, and require open dialogue with public authorities at both national and European level. AFCA-CIAL and its French and European partners are working together to make animal feed more sustainable and more competitive.
