March 21, 2022

FEFAC welcomes EU declaration to increase bloc's production of plant-based protein

FEFAC, which represents EU compound feed and premix manufacturers, has welcome the EU Council's declaration in Versailles, France, on food security following the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

"We will improve our food security by reducing our dependencies on key imported agricultural products and inputs, in particular by increasing the EU production of plant-based proteins," the declaration stated.

For many years, FEFAC supported the European Union's actions and initiatives to strengthen the bloc's food and feed sector resilience based on "lessons learnt" during the COVID-19 pandemic and as the EU Protein Plan was first published in 2018. The European Commission's publication on a contingency plan for ensuring food supply and food security clearly highlighted the vulnerability of the EU feed sector regarding imports of protein-rich feed materials and essential feed additives.

The first ad-hoc European Food Security Crisis Preparedness and Response Mechanism (EFSCM) meeting on the Ukraine-Russia conflict's impact on the EU food sector was held on March 9 2022. The meeting paved the way for an effective crisis management system designed to mitigate food and feed chain disruptions in Ukraine, EU neighbouring countries in the Mediterranean and the most vulnerable EU member states based on sectoral risk assessments.

FEFAC highlighted the crucial importance of preventing the disruption of feed maize deliveries to Southern European ports and thanked Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski for the effective short-term crisis management measures agreed by the European Commission.

FEFAC president Asbjørn Børsting said: "The European Union needs to establish a comprehensive EU food and feed security contingency plan, prioritising food and feed use of grains and oilseeds, both covering the short-term impacts linked to the loss of Black Sea grain deliveries from Ukraine, but also for the mid-term, to buffer the Ukraine crisis impacts, which will be felt for a long time.

"The EU needs to support innovative plant breeding technologies and good agricultural practices to boost its own grain, oilseeds and vegetable protein production."

Børsting noted the need to carefully analyse the Versailles declaration's aim to seek a reduction in the EU's energy dependencies.

He said: "FEFAC members are fully supportive of increasing the EU's feed autonomy and have invested for many years to increase the share of co-products in compound feed production, thus improving the sector's circularity and capacity to recover nutrients from 'non-human edible' feedstuffs.

"EU objectives on boosting the use of biogas and other renewable energy sources could potentially undermine the EU food and feed autonomy objectives, if these co-products used in feed would be deviated towards energy production, meaning they are removed from food and feed production systems and thus increase the EU's reliance on feed imports."

- FEFAC