Feed?off or sustainability: Thoughts technical and organizational innovations for effective implementation of sustainability measures in the feed sector

Due to increasing environmental pressures related to global food demand, recent scandals concerning authenticity and origin of food items, and not lately strategic brand positioning and reputation concerns from relevant retailers and processors of the food industry, the sourcing of sustainably produced feed items is acquiring a key role in the strategy of global food players. Although the flourishing of several and variegate sustainability standards, procedures granting correspondence between specific features of a product and the reality of its sustainability claims remain of uncertain validity. In order to preserve the higher added-value of sustainably produced feed, it is presented a series of organizational and technical innovations granting better correspondence, and traceability, of specific sustainability features of feed raw materials (soymeal, palm oil, PFAD etc.) such as avoided deforestation and land use change, preservation of bio-diverse areas and reduction of green house gas emissions. An on-line platform enables actors along the feed supply chain to monitor and manage incoming raw materials/outgoing goods, tracing back the origin of a delivery with specific sustainability features (e.g. amount of GHG emissions per ton) until the farm level. Once located the origin of the raw material a second on-line system allows proofing through processed spectroscopic data and an ad-hoc indicator the validity of the claim. The information is provided under the form of a map displaying several colours according to the type of sustainability features under examination. Both on-line platforms have a global geographical scope and are able to provide feed producers, through a third party sustainability certificate, with evidences for their contractors when it comes to validity of their sustainability claims. Reliable information on sustainability improvements reflects on trust among actors of the meat production chain, triggering the expansion in new markets and the reinforcing of reputational capital for feed producers.