James McCulloch, Head of Feed Sector at the Agricultural Industries Confederation, discusses how the feed industry is helping to reduce the environmental impact of raw materials and feed to deliver a more sustainable livestock production sector.
The feed industry is at the forefront of efforts to create a more sustainable livestock production sector. With feed being the largest contributor to livestock production emissions, it is crucial to implement sustainable practices to reduce environmental impact. For instance, feed accounts for 87.5% of UK pork production emissions, up to 72% for poultry meat, and 70% for egg production. By implementing sustainable practices, the feed industry can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimise environmental degradation, and promote a more sustainable future for livestock production.
To achieve this, the Agricultural Industry Confederation (AIC) Members in the feed sector have identified eight key principles for assessing feed sustainability.
Animal health and welfare: Ensuring the wellbeing of animals by providing balanced diets, clean water, and a suitable environment for their growth and health.
Formulating to maximise efficiency of digestion: Enhancing nutrient digestibility and reducing resource inputs by meeting the specific nutritional needs of animals at each stage of production.
Ingredient sourcing: Using responsibly sourced ingredients for feed, considering environmental impact and social factors, and sourcing locally when possible.
Circularity: Minimising waste by using co-products and former foodstuffs and applying the food and drink waste hierarchy.
Traceability and transparency: Complying with recognised assurance schemes and using appropriate methodologies to inform consumers and stakeholders about the emissions of feeds.
Environmental impact of feed production and distribution: Reducing environmental degradation by minimising greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, energy consumption, and maximising recyclable elements in feed production.
Social sustainability: Ensuring fair employment, health and safety, community engagement, cultural preservation, social equity, and conflict resolution in livestock feed production.
Economic sustainability: Balancing environmental sustainability with the long-term economic wellbeing of businesses involved in commercial feed and food production.
as kg CO2 eq/kg LW)
By adhering to these principles, the feed industry can make informed choices about ingredient selection and sourcing, ultimately reducing the overall environmental impact of feed materials and additives. Additionally, feed mill managers play a crucial role in ensuring sustainable production and distribution. Businesses can utilise Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) databases, such as the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI), to measure these impacts and relay this information to farmers. This comprehensive approach helps the feed industry contribute to a more sustainable livestock production sector.
This article delves into several key areas of activity within the feed industry that contribute to a more sustainable livestock production sector:
Responsible sourcing of ‘Forest Commodities’.
The use of co-products in feed.
The use of former food products.
The use of additives in feed.
Novel proteins.
Feed life cycle assessment databases.
Future technologies.
Responsible sourcing of ‘Forest Commodities’
The responsible sourcing of ‘Forest Commodities’, such as soya bean meal, palm oil, and their derivatives, is crucial. AIC and, by extension, Feed Advisor Register (FAR) advisers are well placed to deliver facts about soya and its use in the industry. By sticking to the facts, the sustainability community recognises that addressing the sustainability of soya grown in South America and the competitiveness of the UK livestock sectors requires more than just removing soya from diets, and that everyone can unite behind the effort to use responsibly sourced material.
Both the EU Commission and the UK Government have tabled separate deforestation regulatory proposals, with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) coming into force at the beginning of 2026. Commodity supply chains vary in their complexity, and one of the reasons that working out how best to manage responsible sourcing of soya is so challenging is that it is an extremely complicated sector. If you imagine the journey of a soya bean grown in Brazil to the meal from that bean being incorporated in feed in a UK mill and delivered to a farm, you can begin to understand why it is so difficult to trace that material.
Co-mingling of beans from different farms in Brazil at elevators, followed by processing, such as crushing and oil extraction, followed by storage and then international shipping and then more storage and distribution in the destination market are just some of the complexities in the supply chain.
Whilst many organisations have stated positions on soya, most stakeholders recognise the importance of having a broad-based forum to discuss the main issues. The UK Sustainable Commodities Initiative (SCI) is perhaps the forum best placed for all interested parties to come together to try to work out how to deliver responsibly sourced soya to the satisfaction of all parties.
The feed industry is a major contributor to the UK SCI work and fully supports the principle of sustainable feed materials and deforestation-free supply chains. However, the industry remains committed to promoting the use of responsibly sourced soya in livestock diets, emphasising its nutritional value and sustainability and helping communicate the nutritional value of soya to those calling for its wholesale removal from diets.
The use of co-products in feed
Utilising co-products in feed is a highly beneficial practice that contributes to sustainability. Co-products, such as brewers’ grains and distillers’ grains, are valuable nutrient resources that reduce waste and promote a circular economy. It is also important to differentiate between by-products, which are often regarded as unavoidable, low-value residues that require low-cost disposal, and co-products, which are valued nutrient resources requiring care and attention in their production. A by-product is typically an unavoidable residue that needs to be disposed of in a low-cost way. A co-product is recognised for its value as a nutrient resource and is treated with the same care and attention as the main product.
Producing a co-product goes beyond simple legal compliance with feed safety requirements and often triggers an adjustment in the processing methods to ensure a better-quality co-product. Co-products, when used, help to demonstrate that the feed industry should be regarded as circular economy champions. The principle ‘the higher the circularity, the lower the footprint’ certainly bears out.
The main sources of co-products in feed are from:
It should be noted that the use of co-products in feed is coming under increasing competition from the bioenergy sector, particularly in terms of feedstocks used in anaerobic digestion (AD) biogas plants. This is an area where government policy needs to be consistent across several departments to avoid unintended consequences. Increasing the availability of co-products and former food products used in animal feed in the future will likely require more rigorous application of the food and drink material hierarchy, which ensures the use of co-products in animal feed takes precedence over energy production.
The use of former food products
The former foodstuffs play a vital role in the UK animal feed industry, showcasing strong circular economy credentials. Former foodstuffs are foods that typically fail to meet the food manufacturer’s required standards and then become ‘former foodstuffs’, destined for use in animal feed.
Chocolates, crisps, and croissants have an oil content, meaning they are ‘fat-fortified’, offering further nutritional value, and former foodstuffs have also typically undergone heat processing, meaning the starch and other nutrients are more digestible. In the UK, over 650,000 tonnes of former foodstuffs are processed into animal feed each year. Given that the economic allocation of former foodstuffs remains with the food, the carbon footprint of former foodstuffs is very low.
The use of additives in feed
Feed additives, such as amino acids, enzymes, and methane inhibitors, play a crucial role in improving the efficiency of feed digestion. Amino acids enhance protein conversion, enzymes aid in nutrient breakdown, and methane inhibitors reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Amino acids
To meet the growing demand for protein, it is essential to improve the efficiency of conversion of proteins from feed to meat. Amino acids for feed now play indispensable roles in improving the efficiency of animal protein production and contribute to increasing protein supply. If soya bean meal in a ration is substituted with maize, together with the addition of lysine, the protein level in feed is reduced, and the use of 1 tonne of L-Lysine HCl can replace the usage of 33 tonnes of soya bean meal.
Enzymes
These catalyse chemical processes that convert nutrients into energy and new tissue. They do this by binding to substrates in the feed and breaking them down into smaller compounds, making them easier to digest. Phytase improves mineral digestibility in animals and can help reduce phosphorus excretion, and the carbohydrase class of enzymes break down and degrade carbohydrates such as fibre, starch, and non-starch polysaccharides into simple sugars that provide energy for use by the animal.
Methane mitigation and feed additives
There are several nutritional measures that can impact methane emissions. Improving feed quality and intake, lower fibre feeds, and higher starch and fat diets all have a role to play. Methane-suppressing feed additives and supplements inhibit methanogens in the rumen and subsequently reduce enteric methane emissions. Methane-reducing feed additives can take the form of synthetic chemicals, natural supplements, and compounds, such as tannins and seaweed, and fats and oils.
The UK Government is currently considering policy options relating to methane-suppressing feeds.
Novel proteins
The novel protein area is a rapidly developing sector with interesting technologies being explored, particularly those with a low requirement for land to produce the protein sources. These new technologies are often presented by non-governmental organisations, and mainstream media often highlight novel protein sources as promising alternatives to traditional protein sources, though further research and development are needed to fully realise their potential, such as soya and fishmeal. This tends not to be an accurate reflection of the current situation, and the feed industry supports research into novel protein sources while continuing to rely on traditional protein sources for the foreseeable future.
The main streams currently under development are:
Carbon capture technologies: Carbon capture technologies are bringing forward opportunities for the use of single-cell proteins in feed. Single-cell protein (SCP) or microbial proteins are edible unicellular microorganisms such as yeast, bacteria, fungi, and algae that grow on different carbon sources. SCP-based protein meals can offer a sustainable, renewable feed ingredient that can contribute to the replacement of plant-based meals and fishmeal in aquafeeds.
Algae and plant-based protein streams: There are an estimated 800,000 species of algae that range from single-celled microorganisms to multi-celled organisms, such as 200-foot-long giant kelp. Algae produce carbohydrates, oils, protein, vitamins, pigments, and organic materials and can triple or quadruple their biomass every day. Macroalgae, better known as seaweed, has been consumed for years as part of Asian diets and has now been identified as a solution for feeding animals. They are seen as a promising and sustainable option for animal feed and offer a good protein source.
Insect protein: Insects are rich in protein and are a natural component of the diets of many fish and free-range poultry. Fly larvae can be reared on a wide range of wastes and by-products, offering a way of recovering value from materials that may traditionally be disposed of by agriculture and food industries. However, insect farming falls under the same legislation as livestock farming, so the regulations governing what farm livestock can be fed apply to insects too. The UK Food Standards Agency has resourced an insect substrate (feed) safety project which is intended to inform any future policy proposals in this area.
Feed lifecycle assessment databases
The Global Feed Lifecycle Institute (GFLI) is an initiative supported by a large proportion of the global feed industry, and has developed a database containing environmental impact data for the growing and processing of feed ingredients. Data is also available on the inbound transport used to deliver those ingredients from the country and area of production to the point of entry in the user country.
Farm production and further processing required to place livestock products on the retail shelf are beyond the scope of the GFLI. However, to arrive at accurate and meaningful LCA figures for, as an example, a litre of milk or carton of eggs on the retail shelf, GFLI is needed to provide accurate figures for the feed footprint of producing those products. Feed formulators can take the percentage content of each feed ingredient going into a ration and use the GFLI database to build up accurate LCA figures for that ration.
The real value of GFLI data comes when feed advisers are on the farm with livestock farming customers who are asking if their rations can be formulated for low emissions. Using GFLI allows feed advisers to assess the environmental impact of substituting one or more feed materials for another.
The GFLI database and UK subset are regarded as organic datasets, and work will continue to improve on the scope and accuracy of the data. Plans include gap analysis, particularly for UK-grown feed materials where it is accepted that using more accurate input data, such as fertiliser use, may result in improved GHG data.
Another important development for the future is the opportunity for branded products to be included in the GFLI database, which would present an opportunity for, say, certified and verified deforestation and conversion-free soya supply schemes to deliver data for their soya, which can then be expressed within the GFLI database without land use change.
Work is also underway to consider how best to translate information on LCA data and ‘green claims’ onto feed labels.
Future technologies
The feed industry is considering adopting various technologies to enhance sustainable livestock production, including green energy, blockchain, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and electric vehicle (EV) feed distribution.
In conclusion, the feed industry’s commitment to sustainable practices is essential for reducing the environmental impact of livestock production. By adhering to key principles and exploring innovative solutions, the industry can significantly contribute to a more sustainable future.
About the author
James McCulloch joined AIC in January 2018 as Feed Sector Head with the remit to represent the technical and political interests of the UK animal feed compound industry with UK Government and other important stakeholders.
James has had a career in the animal feed and animal health sectors, gathering considerable experience in international trade. He has contributed to the establishment of UK feed industry lobbying groups which have helped to shape the EU regulatory landscape for certain categories of feed. James has sat on a number of UK Government regional and national international trade committees and was awarded an OBE for services to British exports in 2003.
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