BRUSSELS, BELGIUM — The Europeans Compound Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) announced that three more soy schemes have passed the independent benchmarking process and will be available to the European feed market.

The newly added schemes are Bunge Pro-S, CSQA (Italy) and USSEC SSAP, having all met the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021.

FEFAC said the additions bring the total number of responsible soy schemes to 15, “showing the high interest of supply chain partners to strengthen and support the European feed industry’s efforts to foster the mainstream market transformation of the use of responsibly produced soy products.”

It noted that all 15 benchmarked schemes also comply with the specific desired criterion on conversion-free soy, meaning they offer responsibly produced soy grown on land that didn’t come at the expense of any conversion of natural eco-systems as from a certain cut-off date (2020 as the latest possibility).

“The experience shows that FEFAC is fully delivering on its ambition to provide market transparency on the availability of conversion-free soy, with numerous schemes taking inspiration from the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021 to amend or formulate new requirements in this aspect,” said Asbjørn Børsting, president of FEFAC. “With a view to the announced European Commission proposal for deforestation-free supply chains and the COP26 pledge to end deforestation by 2030, we have demonstrated that the soy supply chain is ready to deliver a mainstream market supply of responsible and conversion-free soy to the European feed Page 2 of 3 sector.

“In the interest of effective sourcing strategies and cost-efficient logistical processes, we ask the European Commission and other policy makers to carefully consider the constructive role certification schemes and programs can play to ascertain the conformity of conversion-free soy in a credible way that alleviates administrative burdens, as well as to maintain all existing chain of custody models, which all serve their purpose to respond to market demand and product specifications.”

Compliance with the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021 means that the schemes meet the criteria for responsible soy production that are included in the FEFAC Guidelines, which were developed in an effort to set a transparent “comparison level” for European compound feed manufacturers requested to source responsible soy.