Schemes recognised for responsible soy for feed in Europe

Following the first wave of schemes that successfully passed the benchmarking process in June 2021, there are now 12 schemes that are compliant with 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
• ProTerra Europe

Soy sourcing guidelines on responsible soy

The Soy Sourcing Guidelines 2021, which were released in February 2021, contain a large set of criteria on agricultural, environmental and social items, representing the European feed industry’s requirements for responsible soy. They are designed to support a benchmarking programme for existing responsible soy schemes and programmes offering responsible soy to the European feed market.

Passing the benchmark

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. These guidelines consist of 54 essential (mandatory) and 19 desired criteria in areas such as environmental responsibility, good agricultural practices, respect for legal use of land, and the protection of community relations. To pass the benchmark and thus meet the FEFAC guidelines, all essential criteria must be met and at least 8 out of the 19 desired criteria must be met.

Conversion-free soy

All 12 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).

“…essential to the European feed industry’s capacity to market demand and political expectations…”

FEFAC president, Asbjørn Børsting: “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.