FEFAC’s feed sustainability charter

The challenge for our industry is to secure the supply of high quality animal protein to a continuously growing global population, whilst minimizing the effect on natural resources, by optimizing land use and production efficacy and with an ever lower output in terms of pollution and ecological footprint. Historically, animal production industrialized in order to valorise by-products of human food production (oil → oilcakes, flour → milling by-products). It is common knowledge that a professionalized and large scale animal protein production, based on scientifically documented fundaments, guarantees production efficiency, product quality, and animal welfare, hence minimizing the footprint of animal products and controlling the inherent pollution output.

The European compound feed industry, by means of its branch organisation FEFAC, has issued a feed sustainability charter, highlighting five core ambitions that we integrate in our sustainability policy.


In order to meet these ambitions, it is essential to reduce the footprint of the industry, to reduce the output of methane and other polluting elements (N, P, S, minerals, fine dust,…), to increase the efficiency of meat production, to optimise the use of feed ingredients (by-products, proteins), to lower the need for antibiotics in livestock production and to maximise the worker’s safety.

Animal production is nowadays based on clear and well documented scientific principles. A lot of research supports the feeding methods used nowadays, and our industry is investing vast amounts of money to better understand the science behind future feeding methods. Although industrialized animal production is the best guarantee for an optimal use of resources and a controlled production of greenhouse gasses, the scientific approach of livestock nutrition allows to further finetune production and feeding methods and concepts, leading to a strong reduction of the industry’s ecological footprint and a significant improvement of sustainability.