At their first bilateral meeting in Sao Paulo on 21 August 2014, Messrs Julio Neves, President of Feed Latina and Ruud Tijssens, FEFAC President, stressed the importance of closer cooperation on feed safety, regulatory coherence and sustainable development of feed and livestock production systems to the benefit of their members and chain partners.The meeting was facilitated and attended by Mario Cutait, IFIF Chairman, Robert Betancourt, President of Sindiraçoes (Brazilian feed industry association), Ariovaldo Zani, CEO Sindirações, both Feedlatina board members, and FEFAC Secretary General, Alexander Döring.
Julio Neves and Ruud Tijssens agreed that moving towards closer cooperation of the leading regional feed industry associations in the crucial areas of feed safety, regulatory cooperation and sustainable developments will generate direct synergies and benefits to its members and feed chain partners. This will give a chance to take advantage of the extensive mutual knowledge base and experience in feed safety management and project development, both at regional and global level.
They noted that "feed manufacturers in Europe and Latin America face the same challenges and market expectations when providing safe, affordable and sustainable feed products to their customers and the final consumer of livestock products. Improved cooperation between both organisations will increase the industry's capacity to develop common effective solutions by facilitating knowledge transfer and sharing expertise".
Julio Neves pointed to the proactive partnership between Latin American feed associations, which account for 130 million tonnes of annual feed production, who just started a WTO funded project cooperation to harmonise feed regulatory frameworks in Latin America. This project could also bring direct benefit to European feed companies seeking better market access in Latin America.
Ruud Tijssens highlighted the new FEFAC feed safety management process and the launch of the global Feed LCA database and calculation tool, jointly developed with AFIA, the American Feed Industry Association. Direct project cooperation with FeedLatina would strengthen the credibility and robustness of both projects, given the important position of the Latin American feed industry as exporter of key feed ingredients and livestock products.
