Exploring the needs for sustainability and life-cycle assessment (LCA) from the perspective of the feed industry and the marine ingredient industry, IFFO’s side event was held on 21st October at IFFO’s Annual Conference in Buenos Aires.
A recording from Delanie Kellon, Executive Director of the Global Feed Lifecycle Assessment Institute (GFLI), set the scene with GFLI’s role, providing a globally accessible, evolving animal feed ingredient Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) database and supporting compliant, credible, and transparent environmental assessment of animal feed ingredients. GFLI has continued to evolve with international guidance and works with member companies and industry associations to drive improvement.
The GFLI database includes LCA metrics for more than 1,800 feed ingredients with methodology aligned with FAO’s LEAP (Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance) and EU’s PEFCR (Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules) for Feed guidelines. As part of that the GFLI works on a system boundary of cradle-to-gate of feed ingredient production (feed mill). The full environmental footprint has16+ impact categories, with datasets based on various statistics and secondary data sources, or aggregated primary data. There are three allocation methods used (mass, economic, and energy) and three different formats to allow users to access the data in multiple ways with feed formulations, benchmarks or sustainability reporting.
License to play
David Robb, Director of Sustainability at Cargill Animal Nutrition and Health (Aqua Nutrition Business), provided insights on sustainability in feed and across the whole value chain. The landscape has changed greatly in the last 20 years for aquaculture, with a growing understanding of the needs and pressures and far more diversified diets. Robb stated that “sustainability has become a license to operate for the industry, feed needs to provide a responsible solution within the value chain. Previously, the industry had moved from marine ingredients to soy, which just added other pressures, now with transitioning to other novel ingredients, we will be doing so without focusing on any one ingredient and it needs to be a responsible formulation.” In the past feed formulated focused on nutrients and available raw materials at the lowest price, now in addition to the nutrients and price, we take a holistic approach looking for a feed that promotes good health, growth, and low impacts across the value chain.
Cargill’s approach to sustainability has also evolved, ensuring that we have due diligence built in across ingredients and their sourcing, using the appropriate certifications across supply chains to reinforce this and verify the more basic steps.
Where are the impacts
Looking at the footprint of a salmon, 85% comes from feed and feed use, this is driven by the Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) and the health of the fish, and then by the raw materials used to make the feed. The raw material mix influences the impacts, with marine ingredient footprint generally being greatly outweighed by vegetable proteins. Data has helped decrease or clarify footprint calculations, allowing for more informed decisions and better integrated data along the value chain.
You can only manage what you measure
Brett Glencross noted that you need to be able to assess ingredient footprints on an equitable basis and by using a standardised framework, we can better achieve that but it also allows use to better measure progress. Glencross highlighted the change in aquaculture production in Europe over the last 20 years, and the huge shift in raw materials used to a far more dominant use of plant proteins and oils, following efforts to reduce reliance on marine ingredients. As marine ingredients were reduced the carbon footprint, land use, water consumption and other key indicators went up, and a key cause of this change had been a focus on a single metric: Fish in: Fish out (FIFO).
Glencross added that “LCA is much more than carbon footprint and in Europe you legally have to use this apporach to demonstrate sustainability. Data across the 16+ performance indicators varies greatly. Although it’s a work in progress, with the science in it’s infancy, LCA is providing the best path forward. As we gather the data, we are realising how variable things can be in terms of origin, processing techniques and even the time of harvesting.”
How to map and track impacts: Cradle to Gate
Environmental impacts do not just occur on the production unit, they need to be tracked from raw material extraction (capture), processing, distribution, consumption/use, and waste disposal. Defining the extent (boundaries) of a system is critical, and IFFO has focused on a CRADLE-to-GATE (when it leaves ownership of producers) analysis of Marine Ingredient Production. Glencross noted that IFFO has mapped five different system boundaries and flows, due to the range of production flows, such as direct human consumption processing and then the use of the remaining by-products, which can involve secondary transfers for rendering.
The challenge was to standardize the data in these different systems to 1 tonne of fish to ensure the data is usable. Glencross added that “the data collection challenge is huge with GFLI and PEFCR mandate ruling that we use a 1% “cutoff”, meaning everything contributing more than 1% of the footprint needs to be included in the assessment”. Robb noted that ‘we need one methodology and we’ve chosen one that we feel is most fit for the value chain and ingredient providers. It also is encouraging more by-products to be used. Our suppliers are now seeing where and how they can drive improvements.”
IFFO’s data collection
IFFO has created a primary data collection excel template for companies to then use, covering key data elements across five systems: processing, rendering, fishing, and transportation between them. This data is then fed into Simapro, the LCA standard software which allows you to then map and access the data. Simapro allows companies to map not just carbon foodprint, but also land use, ozone depletion, water use or even ecotoxicity, helping broaden the discussion on various ingredients. Interesting takeaways include that the higher oil yields tend to have lower carbon footprints, and the differing impacts of fishing methods, with purse seine fishing methods having a lower carbon footprint. The footprint of by-products were found to be a lot lower, due to the allocation method as the fishing footprint is split with the fillet and by-products. IFFO’s work is helping expand the database from 50 datasets covering 32 products in 2023 to 370 datasets covering 52 products in 2026, improving comparisons across sectors, and producing those datasets based on actual industry activity.