FONEI Progress Report Highlights
The German Forum for More Sustainable Protein Feed (FONEI) has released its 2nd Progress Report, highlighting achievements and challenges across the protein feed supply chain from field to plate. Positive developments include enhanced traceability of deforestation-free imported soy and collaborative projects focusing on domestic grain legumes and rapeseed. However, FONEI identifies expanding supply and accessing new markets as significant challenges. FONEI members discussed methods such as life cycle assessments and real cost accounting, which take into account the ecological and social costs of production. According to FONEI members, the economic risk and extra effort involved in particularly sustainable and certified products should be spread and made visible along the entire value chain.
The report underscores the commitment of FONEI members from 2022 to 2023 and offers insights into the continued evolution of the protein feed market.
Fundamentally, members emphasize the importance of improving the framework conditions: they call for policy support to strengthen the competitiveness of domestically produced protein feed, particularly legumes.
As a member of FONEI, the ProTerra Foundation benefits significantly from the insights and advancements in FONEI’s second progress report, reaffirming its commitment to sustainability. The report provides ProTerra with valuable data, enhances its credibility, offers collaboration opportunities, and informs its strategic direction in promoting sustainable protein animal feeds.
Background
FONEI includes 51 companies, associations, organizations, scientific institutions, and authorities from the fields of agriculture, environmental protection, consulting, feed and food production, and food retail. Of these, 28 actors are regular members and 23 are associate members.
The Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE) oversees FONEI as part of the Protein Crop Strategy (EPS) of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).
Further information and the current progress report are available at www.eiweissforum.de.