Our community asked GMP+ International to play our part in the biggest challenge facing the industry today; sustainability. So last year we redesigned our mission to include sustainability, and together we are part of the team working to make it concrete and elevate feed sustainability to the same level as feed safety.
As Martine highlighted recently, no matter what happens in the world of politics and compliance, we need to do what is right for the future of the feed industry, and that the companies who invest in their sustainability efforts gain benefits compared to their competitors.
Harmonisation, collaboration, transparency
As a standard-setter, there are a couple of things we can do to help. Firstly, we can harmonise all the complex or conflicting guidance into usable standards for across the value chain. As any company exploring their options knows, sustainability is a complex world and even understanding the options can be a huge challenge.
And secondly, we can bring the sector together. It’s important that companies don’t do it alone. There are numerous benefits to collaboration in this space because aligning with common standards makes a more level playing field, and participants benefit from the transparency and the trust that comes with being part of collaborative and verified systems.
That’s why we have been looking at two specific solutions that can lay the foundations for future developments; a data protocol, and an international standard for measuring the carbon footprint of compound feed.
Towards an international carbon footprint standard
On carbon footprint (CFP), we are already building on what we’ve learned. As well as the lessons from our pilot with Dutch companies, we’ve looked at the experiences of adjacent sectors (such as food and retail), held two Think Tanks, and hosted discussions with more than 25 stakeholders from around the world and from various segments of the value chain.
A clear need for harmonisation has emerged. This is not only due to the growing importance of environmental foot printing and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), particularly among food retailers and policymakers. It is also due to the fact that, despite the broad range of existing methodologies, there is a lack of Scope 3-specific tools tailored to the needs of feed operators.
Our stakeholders highlighted that the market currently lacks a consistent, widely accepted way of calculating and communicating the carbon footprint of feed. There is a clear market need for a unified, credible, and transparent approach to carbon footprint calculations within the feed sector – and we want to help establish it.
And so, we are working on a harmonised standard that is globally applicable, aligned with international frameworks, and with an expanded scope. It will use a LCA methodology based on Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) and integrated with the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) database.
This approach means LCAs are robust and reliable, but also reproducible and comparable. The standard will be aimed to be applicable for producing and trading compound feed and premixtures, and – most importantly – it will be available internationally.
We are taking initiative to partner with another feed scheme, OVOCOM, where we are combining our experience and their experience of LCA standardisation in the Belgian market. We will launch a public consultation in July to gather feedback from the wider community on the quality and relevance of the standard we are drafting now that we aim to launch in March 2026.
Reliable data across the supply chain
We’ve also been exploring the topic of EUDR compliance. Over the past months we conducted a sector analysis, interviewed over 20 stakeholders from and surrounding the feed and food chain worldwide, and held a special Think Thank session with organisations representing production and trade companies in NW-Europe. As part of this effort, GMP+ has partnered with NewForesight – a strategy consultancy focused on driving transitions toward sustainable economies.
It turns out that the challenges behind EUDR compliance are the same for many other sustainability efforts; the lack of end-to-end data. Many stakeholders highlighted the scattered nature of data systems and the need for an easy-to-use solution. There is a pressing and increasing need for reliable, harmonised, and low-threshold data across the supply chain. In order to support compliance, and efforts towards a more sustainable feed sector; particularly for traceability, legality, and land-use change.
To address this, we are exploring a Data Protocol – a modular framework that defines the essential data, assurance rules, and transfer mechanisms needed to enable credible, scalable sustainability claims across actors in the feed supply chain.
We are currently shaping the scope of a pilot project, with the aim of testing how this data protocol can be applied in a real-world context – starting with Deforestation and Conversion-Free (DCF) feed. This will help assess its feasibility, user-friendliness, and added value to the feed and livestock sector. The intention is to develop a scalable and trusted data infrastructure that, in the long run, could also support carbon and biodiversity reporting needs.
Shaping solutions with frontrunner
This is an exciting time to be partnering with GMP+ International, and there are upcoming opportunities for you to help shape our solutions.
- Share your views through the public consultation on our upcoming CFP standard.
- Join the CFP pilot audits. We are preparing for CFP pilot audits in collaboration with our accepted Certification Bodies. Participating in pilot audits is a great way to get ahead of the curve, test practical implementation, and help shape how our sector adopts and uses a harmonised carbon foot printing methodology.
- Help build our Data Protocol pilot. We are also shaping the pilot for our Data Protocol, and we’re reaching out to stakeholders interested in co-developing or participating in this effort to help build a scalable, trusted data infrastructure that facilitates sustainability and supports compliance. If you would like to stay involved or explore partnership opportunities, we want you to get in touch.
The moment to start is now. If you are interested in being one of the frontrunners as we shape this foundational work, then we’d love to talk. Please reach out by 18 July by mailing Hasret Celebi or Stan Hendriks. Together, we can help enable not just individual companies, but an entire industry, to be more sustainable and fit for the future.