October 12, 2016

IFIF, FAO strengthen collaboration on safe and sustainable feed
 

The International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held their 15th annual meeting at FAO Headquarters on October 6-7.

The purpose of the event is to further strengthen collaboration on critical issues to ensure safe, nutritious and sustainable feed and food. 

The meeting was officially opened by Dr. Berhe Tekola, director of the FAO Animal Production & Health Division who highlighted the importance of private partnerships to support the FAO strategy.

Joel Newman, IFIF's chairman, reiterated IFIF's commitment to this longstanding partnership and highlighted that "with the dedicated colleagues at the FAO, we have achieved very important milestones, including the Feed Manual of Good Practices for the Feed Industry, the International Feed Regulators Meetings (IFRM) and the Global Feed & Food (GFFC) Congress Series".

Newman added that "our joint meeting underlined that IFIF is committed to continue to support the FAO initiatives on capacity development for feed safety, the LEAP partnership and the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, as well as joint efforts on feed and food safety at the Codex Alimentarius". According to Newman, IFIF looks forward to its upcoming FAO IFIF 10th International Feed Regulators Meeting (IFRM) in Atlanta, US, in January 2017, which is an example of FAO-IFIF collaboration "positively impacting" the feed and food chain.

Daniela Battaglia, livestock development officer at the Animal Production and Health Division of the FAO, said: "FAO and IFIF have a longstanding partnership and this meeting addressed a number of critical issues of common interest, such as the need for capacity development to ensure feed safety and the importance of collaborating to tackle the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). FAO is committed to work with the private sector and feed operators and believes that they can valuably contribute to make the livestock and food sectors more responsible and sustainable to achieve important goals such as public health, and animal health and welfare."

- IFIF