On 10 June 2015, FEFAC held its 58th Annual General Meeting in Cologne with the theme “Securing the future of EU livestock and feed production”. In his opening speech, FEFAC President Ruud Tijssens commended the work progress of the feed industry on feed safety management and environmental performance, showing the European feed industry is capable of leading the way in safety and sustainability. He stated that “with the reshaped vision on Feed Safety Management, the publication of the FAO Feed Life Cycle Assessment guidelines, and FEFAC’s own draft Soy Sourcing Guidelines, the EU feed industry has lived up to its commitments as a responsible sector-representing federation that looks at improving the efficacy and sustainability of the entire food and feed chain”.
An essential element of the reshaped vision on Feed Safety Management is building on the success stories of close cooperation between official and private sector safety controls, which was reflected in an expert round table discussion between several experts from national competent authorities and the European Commission in the 2nd session of the day. The FAO LCA guidelines for feed are an essential milestone allowing FEFAC to develop its sector rules for measuring the environmental footprint of feed production. The Soy Sourcing Guidelines provide a set of minimum criteria against which owners of responsible soy schemes and programmes can benchmark their own programmes, with a view to foster the mainstream supply of responsible soy.
In a dedicated workshop on the strategic feed material supply, participants discussed the economic impact of the EU GM crop import approval process. In his speech, Tijssens stressed that “the feed industry needs to increase the awareness among political decision-makers that the European Commission proposal to renationalise the GM import approvals is a serious threat to the feed & livestock industry’s competitiveness and will knock-out the entire sector in “opt-out” countries by losing market access to protein-rich feed ingredients”.