World Grain -- December 2013 - 40

FEATURE: european feed industry challenges

consumers that it can go hand in hand
with high standards of animal welfare
and environmental performance.
To handle all the challenges that face
them, they need to enhance communicating with the rest of the chain and
with the rest of society more effectively.
FEFAC, the European Compound Feed
Manufacturers Federation, elected its
new President, Ruud Tijssens, Director
of Corporate Affairs for Agrifirm
Group, based in the Netherlands, at its
Congress in Cracow in Poland earlier
this year.
In an interview with World Grain in
October, he started by stressing the need
to face up to the scarcity of raw materials
in a world in which there will be 9 billion
people by 2050, as well as a wider political issues and environmental issues.
"We need to reduce the impact of
livestock farming on climate change,"
he said.
He believes that the industry does
have the right approach. "The current
way of modern and efficient livestock
farming delivers very low greenhouse
gas emissions per kilogram of meat or
milk," he said.
Environmental issues have become hugely important for the
European industry.
"Resource efficiency is one of the
important subjects driving innovation and thereby reducing the environmental impact," he said. That includes a need to make sure that raw
materials are produced with the greatest possible efficiency in the use of
agricultural inputs. Phosphate efficiency and nitrogen efficiency could be
increased by 30%."
Tijssens believes in a future in which
the animal feed industry is producing a
specialist product, moving swiftly away
from the currently prevailing commodity-based business model and he believes
that is how feed should be seen by suppliers and customers.
"We deliver nutrition of the right type
for each individual animal at every stage
of its development," he said.
He highlighted the potential influence
40

of nutrition on what have previously
been thought of as genetic issues. The
industry is developing what is known as
precision feeding.
"That is a very important driver,"
he said. "We are working very closely
with the (United Nations) Food and
Agriculture Organization. We are also
very much involved in setting up a
precompetitive European Research &
Innovation agenda for animal nutrition.
This is very important.
"We really see challenges ahead.
We are totally aware of the discussion
over the social acceptance of this model
of livestock farming in Europe. We as
FEFAC realized we cannot solve all the
problems alone."
He laid great stress on the need for
FEFAC to work with other organizations in the industry, the supply chain
and with governmental bodies. That includes authorities at the local level.
"The issue of social acceptance is
playing its role at different levels in
society - from European to small
communities. It does ask different answers on all these different levels" he
said. "But we have to take them all
serious and as the feed industry deliver according to our possibilities to
influence the discussion and to deliver
potential answers."
Locally, the discussions are dominated by the effect of farming on the
local environment, like odor, emissions
or logics. But it ranges also to the concerns of European consumers about
how and where oilseeds, including soy,
are grown.
"Sustainable raw materials are a very
important issue," he said. "We're already
working on European industry guidelines
for the import of sustainable soy."
The second issue is food safety. "We
have had some crises," he said.
He highlighted the effects of scandals
over dioxin or the BSE problem. "A
lot of food quality systems are in place
now," he said. "That didn't mean there
were no problems. We still are facing
emerging issues."
As an example, he cited the case ear-

lier this year in which aflatoxins were
found in milk in several European countries due to delivery of contaminated
corn from Southeastern Europe.
The feed industry's top 10 CEOs have
got together to drive the industry's approach to safety problems to the next
level and they plan to get the European
association to do more.
"The mandate of FEFAC is going to
be enlarged on this subject," he said.
"We are also calling on COCERAL, our
main trade partners, to enter into dialogue to find chain solutions on how we
can increase transparency throughout
the chain. We will start to work on a coalition of the willing."
FEFAC will be looking at how feed
producers can organize the information flow and the discussion on contractual clauses covering feed safety
with their suppliers.
"How can we organize the liability?"
he asked. "What is in contracts is business to business; this is a fact. But at the
same moment the weakest link in the
sector can have substantial impact on
this issue. So we have to find a way to
improve the contracts. We need to look
at where we take samples and how we
take samples in the feed chain.
"We are really calling for all traders
and suppliers, as well as COCERAL, to
get involved to apply the 'top-of-thepyramid' approach on testing and monitoring of feed materials, meaning the
key responsibility for testing lies with
the first placer on the market. This is
crucial to avoid spreading contamination further down the feed chain in order to protect our livestock farmers and
the dairy and meat procession industry
and ultimately the final consumer."
Strategic raw material SupplieS
"Europe is becoming more and more
an island," he said. "Our feed safety
norms are the most stringent at the global level on GMOs. Europe has the most
stringent legislation worldwide. And
sustainability of raw materials will be
added to the list in the near future.
"We still think and act as if we are in a

December 2013 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

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World Grain -- December 2013

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