Arlington, USA – Recognizing that animal feed is a critical component in measuring the total environmental footprint of animal nutrition products, an international consortium came together in 2016 to establish a global standard for calculating the life-cycle analysis (LCA) of feed ingredients. Now, the founding partners of the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) are establishing a legal non-profit institute, under the same name, to expand its work and make the data more widely available to stakeholders throughout the global food value chain.
“Having access to reliable and scientific environmental data on feed ingredients is important for companies, academia and others working on sustainable animal protein production for not only improving the accuracy of their environmental reporting, but also for benchmarking and setting future sustainability goals,” the founding GFLI partners said.
The institute’s mission will be to make publicly available an expanded regional and sectorial animal nutrition LCA database, consolidating the existing LCA datasets GFLI developed for the European Union, United States and Canada. The initial datasets are based on the environmental standards of the Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership, a project led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The institute will also develop tools to assist stakeholders in assessing the environmental footprint of animal nutrition products and encourage continuous improvement throughout the global animal nutrition and food industry.
“The consortium is a great example of several international feed partners taking responsibility voluntarily and creating something that will serve a greater good to the animal agricultural community,” said GFLI Board chair Greg Downing. “Now, as a formal non-profit association, we will be able to expand our work of developing LCA datasets for feed ingredients for other regions and broaden our reach with stakeholders making sustainability decisions.”
The GFLI Board launched the new institute on Sept. 19 at the American Feed Industry Association’s (AFIA) offices in Arlington, Va., USA. The new legal entity will be incorporated in the District of Columbia, USA. The institute is expected to be operational by early 2020.
The founding partners elected the following representatives to serve on the institute’s inaugural Board of Directors:
- American Feed Industry Association – Constance Cullman, AFIA President and CEO, and Greg Downing, member of the GFLI North American Project Group (GFLI Chairman)
- European Feed Manufacturers Federation (FEFAC) – Nick Major, FEFAC president, (GFLI Vice-Chair) and Lina Sofie von Fricken, Chair, EU GFLI Group
- Animal Nutrition Association of Canada (ANAC) – Melissa Dumont, ANAC Executive Director
- International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF) – Sebastian Csaki, IFIF Senior Advisor
- Norwegian Seafood Federation (NSF) – Henrik Stenwig, NSF director
The institute’s technical management committee chair will also serve as a member of the Board.
For more information on participating in the GFLI project or gaining access to the current datasets please contact the GFLI Secretariat at laniekellon@gmail.com.
About the GFLI
The Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) is a feed industry initiative with the aim to develop a freely and publicly available feed LCA database and tool based on the UN FAO-led Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership sector-specific guidelines and methodology to assess environment performance of livestock supply chains. The GFLI database and LCA tool will support meaningful LCAs of livestock products and enable to benchmark feed industry environmental impacts. For more information about the GFLI, please visit www.globalfeedlca.org.
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