06/06/14: 57th FEFAC Annual General Meeting “Greening the landscape for animal nutrition in Europe”

FEFAC calls for EU policy shift towards innovation 

FEFAC President Ruud Tijssens highlighted the need for EU policy makers to shift towards innovation in order to unlock the potential of the EU livestock sector at the 57th FEFAC Annual General Meeting. In his opening speech, he stated that “the European Parliament elections and the new European Commission legislature provide key opportunities to change the political mindset towards recognising the EU agri-food chain, including the livestock sector, as a key asset for generating economic growth and new job opportunities”. This view is shared by the EU agri-food chain coalition, jointly representing around 30 million jobs and 3.5% of gross added value in the EU-28, who recently published their manifesto including 18 practical policy proposals fostering an ambitious, innovation- based EU policy framework based on innovation and sustainability. Tijssens stated that FEFAC’s contribution to the new policy orientations is based on three key actions:

  • Assuring a safe feed supply

FEFAC will strive to improve the regulatory coherence and cooperation at EU and global level, e.g. by implementing the new global Codex Alimentarius guidelines on feed safety risk assessment and feed hazard prioritisation and by promoting a permanent EU-US working group on the feed safety regulatory framework to the present T-TIP negotiations jointly with its US sister organisation AFIA;

In order to reduce feed safety risk, FEFAC will strongly promote the implementation of measures as close to the origin as possible in the feed supply chain in close cooperation with its upstream trade partners via its feed safety road map and encourage the application of an EU wide general feed safety contractual clause. 

 • Promoting a competitive and innovative feed and livestock industry

FEFAC will continue raising awareness at EU level to establish for the need to develop a policy framework safeguarding the strategic raw material supply to the EU feed and livestock sector; 

FEFAC, together with its key EU chain partners, will launch and contribute to the development of a comprehensive EU protein balance sheet which accounts for all EU protein sources including home grown cereals and, in a next step, forage production, in order to have a more meaningful, accurate monitoring tool to measure the CAP reform impacts on the EU supply of proteins. 

• Investing in a resource-efficient, responsible feed industry 

FEFAC will actively contribute to future research and development projects in order to increase EU protein supply in the framework of the DG AGRI EIP platform on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability;

FEFAC will launch a roadmap on the responsible soy to facilitate a stepwise mainstream market supply of soybean products to the EU feed market;

FEFAC will develop a global harmonised Feed LCA calculation tool and a LCA feed database jointly with its US sister organisation AFIA to allow for comparable environmental foot print calculations. 

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