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"If Europe
is to have a sustainable future, it needs to become more
resource-efficient and less polluting. This handbook will provide a much
needed reference to support decision-making and ensure better
environmental choices when designing goods and services. A scientifically
robust and reliable approach is essential to support the requirements of
business and policy-makers in a coherent and efficient manner”,
Potočnik said at the time.
The
issue is also of huge concern to the European consumer. According to a
July 2009 Eurobarometer survey, 83% of Europeans said the impact of a
product on the environment plays an important aspect in their purchasing
decisions.
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The
agri-food sector, meanwhile, which has often been blamed for being
responsible for a large share of the environmental impacts caused by
human activity, has been continuously improving its production
processes and improving its environmental footprint with a view to be
as sustainable as possible.
The
EU's Sustainable Consumption and Production and Sustainable Industrial
Policy Action Plan of July 2008, not only advocates sustainable
practice, but also encourages industry players to take advantage of
opportunities to innovate and adopt a “Life Cycle Thinking”
(LCT) approach.
Feedinfo
News Service discussed the issue with Dr. Michael Binder; who is Senior
Manager for Regulatory Affairs at Evonik Degussa’s Feed Additive
Business, and Chairman of the Task Force on Sustainable Agriculture at
FEFANA, the EU Feed Additives and Premixtures Association; to find out
what LCT work has been carried out at European feed additive industry
level.
In a
nutshell, LCT is the process of taking into account in decision-making
both the resources consumed and the environmental and health pressure
associated with the full life cycle of a product. Applying LCT in the
feed additive sector means covering and evaluating all inputs and
outputs of a product during its whole life span from the early
beginning of the production until its final decomposition –
“from cradle to grave”, says Dr. Binder.
Dr.
Binder argues that the feed additive sector is an ideal fit for LCT
principles and has two significant advantages. On the one hand, the use
of additives improves feed and food quality. On the other hand, their
use allows a sustainable reduction of environmental pollution against
the background of an increasing global population.
“Modern
concepts of animal nutrition are always based on optimised diet
formulations covering the specific nutritional demand of the animal by
best use of available feed raw materials. The goal is good animal
welfare and performance as well as economically-optimised feed
formulation. The combination of ecologically and economically-optimised
diets is an innovative and sustainable approach for animal health and
environmental welfare”, he comments.
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Dr.
Binder highlighted the LCT work undertaken so far for the production of
phytase and amino acids.
The
FEFANA taskforce chairman believes that phytase is an ideal LCT
candidate.
He
argues: “The supplementation with phytase reduces the demand of
free inorganic phosphate in animal feed as it increases the
bio-availability of plant-bound organic phosphate. Thus two central
aspects of life cycle thinking are touched. Firstly, the ecological
burden of phytase production is smaller than the burden of production of
DCP or MCP. Secondly, natural sources of organic phosphate are used more
effectively so that there is no surplus in the manure. The latter is
critical as it has an impact in two aspects; one is the waste of
important phosphorus resources and the other one is the significant
phosphorus contributions to the environmental impact category of
eutrophication”.
As for
amino acids, Dr. Binder looks at the differences of amino acid value
between the feed ingredient and the feed additive.
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"In the future economical and ecological
optimisation will go hand in hand, especially in the field of feed
additives, where the ecological burden of their production will be almost
insignificant compared to the significant environmental savings during
the application phase in animal nutrition, which takes place at farm
level."
- Dr.
Michael Binder
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He
saw that, when evaluating specific environmental benefits or burdens
(according to the international standards on life cycle assessment, ISO
14040 to 14044), in terms of amino acid value, 36 kg of soybean meal
corresponded to 1 kg of Lysine and 64 kg of fishmeal corresponded with
1 kg of DL-Methionine.
“In
the future economical and ecological optimisation will go hand in hand,
especially in the field of feed additives, where the ecological burden
of their production will be almost insignificant compared to the
significant environmental savings during the application phase in
animal nutrition, which takes place at farm level”, he comments.
To
illustrate what environmental savings can be made, Dr. Binder uses
DL-Methionine as an example. He shows that the 750,000 tons of
DL-Methionine produced globally in 2009 caused about 2 million tons of
carbon dioxide emissions. However, if all that quantity was used
efficiently in broiler diets, then he estimates that total dioxide
emissions were 50 million tons lower.
Dr.
Binder explains this: “Since Methionine is the first limiting
amino acid in broiler nutrition, a consequent supplementation of that
amino acid to broiler diets can balance the Methionine deficiency
yielding in improved feed conversion. Thus significant amounts of feed
raw materials can be saved resulting in less consumption of arable land
for crop production”.
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“Environmental
savings of greenhouse gases contributing to the global warming potential
can be reduced by roughly 50 million tons of carbon dioxide mainly based
on land use change or respectively roughly 5 million tons of ammonia or
nitrate contributing either to terrestrial or aquatic eutrophication due
to less manure and reduced nitrogen emissions”, he adds.
As Dr.
Binder says, by using DL-Methionine or other feed additives, less arable
land needs to be used for crop production, and, therefore, natural raw
materials can be saved for other applications than feed.
He
goes on to say: “Against the background of the continuously growing
global population and the decreasing amount of arable land due to the
climatic impacts, the saving of natural feed raw materials will help to
secure human nutrition in future”.
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He
also believes that supplementing with feed additives and saving on the
need for raw materials can, to another extent, reduce Europe’s
dependency on imported protein sources such as North and South American
soybean meal.
Dr.
Binder does admit that until now only amino acids and phytase have been
used to demonstrate the principles and the potential of life cycle
assessment, because the information is already publically available.
However, he believes that, in principle, the findings for amino acids
and phytase, together with the methodology, could be used for any other
types of feed additives, taking into account their specific
recommendations of different manufacturing processes or applications.
Dr.
Binder does point out though that several member companies of FEFANA
have already specifically assessed their products by life cycle
analysis. His Task Force is now trying to gather all these experiences
to develop guidance for the feed additive industry on life cycle
thinking.
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"For Lysine and Threonine, dedicated LCA studies
are currently under finalisation, thus clear results can be published
soon."
- Dr.
Michael Binder
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“FEFANA
as an association in its Task Force Sustainable Agriculture is currently
on the way to identify harmonized life cycle assessment
procedures”, he says.
“For
Lysine and Threonine, dedicated LCA studies are currently under
finalisation, thus clear results can be published soon”.
Unfortunately,
given the need to carry out more LCA studies and collect more data, the
EU’s feed additive industry is not in a position yet to answer some
of concerns of the 83% of European consumers who consider the
environmental issue as crucial when purchasing their food products.
The
July 2009 Eurobarometer survey also showed that 72% of EU citizens
thought that a label indicating a product's carbon footprint should be
mandatory in the future.
Dr.
Binder acknowledges that there is indeed a clear tendency to issue
eco-labels (either voluntarily or mandatorily) on consumer products for
food consumption in Europe. However, in
practice a basic problem remains for food products as harmonised
standards are not yet in place due to the lack of comparability of LCA
study results.
“Additionally,
reducing the labelling only on the carbon footprint while ignoring other
impact categories (such as eutrophication or acidification leading to
forest dieback), may result in misleading the consumer behavior. But on
the other hand, scientifically sound information on an ecological label
might be too complex for simple and clear consumer information”, he
says.
46% of
the citizens surveyed also thought that the best way to promote
environmentally-friendly products would be to increase taxes on
environmentally-damaging products and decrease taxes on
environmentally-friendly products.
Here,
FEFANA’s Sustainable Agriculture Taskforce chairman thinks the
issue, as far as Europe’s feed
additive industry is concerned, should be approached in a different
manner.
“The
environmental burden of the feed additive production is negligible
compared to the environmental benefits of the further use of these
products in animal nutrition. It may be most attractive to promote
ecologically produced feed and food through a differentiated tax
system”, he argues.
One of
the great challenges faced by economies today is to integrate
environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare, basically
doing more with less. This is one of the key objectives set by the
European Union, which the feed additive sector, with the help of Dr.
Binder’s taskforce, is aiming to achieve.
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