All have passed independent benchmarking process
FEFAC and ITC announce that five more schemes offering responsible soy to the European feed market have passed the independent benchmarking process against the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021. The new schemes are ADM Responsible Soy, Amaggi Responsible Soy, ASC from Aapresid, PROFARM Production Standard from Food Chain ID and ProTerra Europe. Following the first wave of schemes that successfully passed the benchmarking process in June 2021, there are now twelve schemes that are compliant with the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021.
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 (see also this factsheet about the guidelines).
All twelve benchmarked schemes also complied with the new specific desired criterion on conversion-free soy, meaning they can offer responsibly produced soy grown on land that didn’t come at the expense of any (illegal or legal) conversion of natural eco-systems (including natural forests) as from a certain cut-off date (2020 as the latest possibility). In the meantime, several other responsible soy schemes and programs have applied for benchmarking against the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021, which is currently being facilitated by ITC.
FEFAC President Asbjørn Børsting: “FEFAC is pleased to see the strong response and interest of scheme owners to include the new desired criterion on conversion-free soy, which is considered as a key market driver in Europe for sustainable soy value chains. The growing access to the market offer on conversion-free soy from robust and verified certification schemes is essential to the European feed industry’s capacity to market demand and political expectations on deforestation and conversion-free supply chains.”
An overview of all the schemes that are compliant with the FEFAC Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021 is available on the FEFAC/ITC Soy Benchmarking Tool, accessible through FEFAC’s webpage on ITC Sustainability Gateway. The Soy Benchmarking Tool also includes a filter system so web users can view which cut-off date the soy schemes include for their conversion-free soy as well as which chain of custody systems. The Soy Benchmarking Tool is a key element of FEFAC’s ambition to provide market transparency for upstream and downstream value chain partners on responsibly produced conversion-free soy, as laid down in FEFAC Feed Sustainability Charter 2030 released in September 2020.
