Nutreco

The challenges of responsibility

Sustainability

There are three main sustainability issues concerning raw materials for animal nutrition. 1) Potentially, raw materials might be used in feed when they could be used directly for human consumption. 2) The cultivation of a crop such as soya can have environmental and social impacts if it displaces another land use or primary forest. 3) Over-consumption of a raw material such as fishmeal could exceed nature’s ability to replenish resources, i.e. wild fish populations.

In the vast majority of instances, the prices that farming or fishing businesses can obtain by selling for human consumption substantially exceed the prices when sold for animal feed. For example, maize of milling quality will command a premium of at least € 9 per tonne over feed grade maize (UK market Feb 2010). Fish sold for human consumption will generally bring in 50–100% more revenue than selling to make fishmeal and fish oil. This market mechanism effectively ensures raw materials are used for food rather than feed whenever possible.
Where the cultivation can have environmental and social impacts if it displaces another land use or primary forest, the issue is best addressed by a joint action of members of the value chain. For example, Nutreco is a member of the Round Table on Responsible Soy and the Dutch Soya Task Force and the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. The Round Table on Responsible Soy is an international multi-stakeholder initiative that brings together those concerned with the impacts of the soya economy. It is working to define responsibly grown and processed soya and to promote the best available practices to mitigate negative impacts throughout the value chain. Responsible soya includes specifications such as no forced labour and not buying soya from illegally cultivated land. Draft principles and criteria were evaluated in the field in 2009 (www.responsiblesoy.org ).
Fishmeal is a good example of a raw material where over-consumption would lead to sustainability problems, in this case with wild fish stocks. For this reason, governments and many participants along the value chain, including Nutreco, are working to ensure fishing is controlled and to purchase from responsibly managed sources and not from illegal, unreported or unregulated fisheries. The sustainability of fishmeal, and related sustainability issues for aquaculture, are part of the SEA Programme discussed on page 36.

Another means of reducing demand pressure on limited raw materials is by finding alternative raw materials. This is an important activity in the R&D programmes of Nutreco.

The nutrition in Nutreco feeds always matches the needs of the animals as closely as possible. However, there is great flexibility in the way feeds can be prepared. Many different combinations of raw materials will provide a feed that matches the nutritional specification prepared by our animal specialists. The Nutreco people who formulate the feeds select from available raw materials to devise the least-cost combination that provides the nutrition specified. These least-cost formulations help to keep food prices down as well as winning and keeping feed customers. Identifying new raw materials increases the options and helps to take pressure off those raw materials where the sustainable supply may be limited. Therefore Nutreco has a research centre dedicated to identifying alternative raw materials, especially among the by-products of other industries such as food, beverages and biofuels. For example, a plant converting wheat into bio-ethanol will also produce by-products that can be used in animal feed; over 800 tonnes DDGS (dried distillers grains with solubles) for every million litres of fuel. Nutreco R&D is investigating how to make the best use of these new by-products, for example by analysis for nutritional content and the presence of antinutrional factors.

The raw material purchasing team uses the formulation flexibility brought by research to avoid raw materials in short supply, and therefore expensive, and to buy those in surplus, which minimises dumping or destruction of unwanted agricultural produce. Thus the animal nutrition industry is central in the efficient use of agricultural resources.

MicroBalance™ increases fishmeal flexibility

Fishmeal is an important ingredient in fish feeds for species such as Atlantic salmon. Feeds for Atlantic salmon represent a major proportion (about 75%) of the feed produced by Nutreco fish feed business Skretting, which has around 35% of the global market. In 2009 Nutreco research showed that, in addition to protein and amino acids, fishmeal contains micro-nutrients that are important in performance and health. Adding those separately to the feed from alternative sources, they were able to almost halve the level of fishmeal from previous typical levels of 25–30%. This advance means the sustainably available fishmeal can be used to produce far more fish from aquaculture to meet the growing demand. Introduced under the concept name of MicroBalance™, the approach is being applied commercially in a new generation of salmon and trout feeds in the early months of 2010, first in Norway and then in the UK. The progress achieved to date in this R&D programme demonstrates that Nutreco addressed the criticism at the beginning of this century that 5 kg of fish caught off the coast of Peru were needed to grow 1 kg of salmon and Nutreco now has the nutritional knowledge to make an 80% reduction of that ratio possible.

Efficiency

In addition to aiming for sustainable raw materials, we must find

ways of getting the greatest nutritional benefit from them while maintaining high levels of animal welfare and feed-to-food safety. Motivated by commercial and sustainability considerations, our research and development teams aim to increase the efficiency with which raw materials are processed into feed and the efficiency with which the animals can use that feed. Nutreco has three pilot-scale

feed plants to explore feed processing options, to optimise processing of new raw materials and to provide experimental feeds. These are located in the Netherlands, Spain and Norway.

One way to increase the efficiency with which animals utilise their

feed is to match nutritional content as closely as possible to their nutritional needs. Nutreco researchers are continuously investigating the optimum nutrition at every phase of the life cycle. Their research shows that correct feeding greatly improves productivity and health,

especially at what we refer to as the transition phases. These are phases such as preparation for insemination, gestation, birth and lactation, also weaning and early feeding stages for the young animals. The effect is equally valid for fish as for land animals. Nutreco has a growing number of feeds and specialty products formulated to provide optimum nutrition at these phases, such as Milkiwean for young piglets. The specific nutritional needs at transition phases are also being incorporated in the models used to advise customers on feeds and feeding, such as the Optifeed model for pigs described on page 30.

Finding ways to increase the nutritional benefit that farm animals get from their feed, for example through the use of feed additives to aid digestion, is another research theme. On a broader scale, the potential for further progress was discussed by leading scientists at the Innovision conference organised by Nutreco prior to Agri Vision 2009, see page 15.

Models of precision

From R&D we know what nutrition is needed for a category of farm animals,
e.g. dairy cows or gestating sows, and our feed companies can provide it. We can make better use of the raw materials by matching feed to need more precisely; taking account of individual farm circumstances and objectives and even the characteristics of individual animals. This is done by developing models that include as many of these factors as possible. For example, in 2009 the swine researchers and animal feed businesses of Nutreco shared a massive volume of data in preparing the Optifeed model and range of sow feeds for launch in Spain at the beginning of 2010.

The Optifeed model shows the costs and predicted benefits from several feeding options and it takes factors such as the time of year into account. For example, a more concentrated feed is recommended in summer when high temperatures mean the sows tend to eat less. The range includes feeds for gestation, for the transition period in the final week of gestation, and for lactation. Where farms have the appropriate equipment and electronic tagging, the feed and feeding is specific for each sow.

In a further contribution to improving sustainability, environmental optimisation parameters will be introduced into Nutreco nutrition models.

Protecting nutrition

In 2009, a Nutreco specialty business introduced a high-performance mould inhibitor, Fylax® Forte. Fylax Forte is used on finished feeds and raw materials such as grains to prevent moulds from developing while they are in storage and it is significantly more effective than other currently available inhibitors. It reduces waste, improves feed safety and contributes to gaining maximum benefit from agricultural resources.

Boosting the benefit

Nutreco researchers are investigating ways of getting the greatest nutritional benefit from the raw materials being used. They are making progress, for example, by the addition of feed additives such as Optimin® chelated minerals. These specially produced molecules effectively protect a trace mineral such as zinc and escort it through the digestive system until it reaches the location where it should be released and absorbed. The zinc content of the feed can be closer to the animal’s needs, with much less wasted in the manure. Optimin chelated minerals are supplied by Trouw Nutrition International for ruminant, pig, poultry and fish feeds.

Environment

Matching feeds to needs precisely, increasing productivity from feeds and extracting maximum nutritional benefit from feed raw materials all make animal protein production more efficient. Progress also brings an environmental benefit. Utilising nutrients more efficiently reduces pollution of the environment from excreta. For example, the Optimin chelated minerals described above reduce the loss of zinc into the environment.

The second environmental challenge is the production of greenhouse gases that may lead to climate change.

Nutreco Sustainability Report 2009