November 26, 2014
Evonik hosts symposium on sustainable meat production
The Evonik Sustainability Symposium 2014, held during EuroTier 2014 in Hannover, Germany, addressed the topic of sustainable meat production.
Evonikhad invited representatives of a wide range of interest groups to examine fundamental connections in the supply chain as well as their social and ecological implications in a panel discussion.
Speakers at the symposium were in agreement that there is a clear trend, even though it has not yet reached all consumers, trading companies, meat producers, and feed manufacturers, that the future belongs to sustainable food items produced in ways that do not overtax natural resources.
Neither the representative of the Club of Rome, Prof. Radermacher, nor the speaker of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), Markus Wolter, disputed that animal protein is part of a healthy diet.
From Radermacher''s point of view, food supply is currently sufficient. He states that the problem is political and results from many people''s lack of buying power. Nevertheless, he anticipates that in future land use problems will arise from conflicts between grain farming, feed farming and the harvest of raw materials for biofuels. He advocated intelligent land use- for example with cattle grazing and re-forestation, consumer prices that "tell the truth," and global management of these processes.
Separately, Jose R. Villalon, Corporate Sustainability Director at Nutreco, demonstrated how efficiency increases in feed production and feed processing enable the optimisation of milk and meat production while preserving resources.
"A single cow producing 9,000 litres of milk per year is better for the environment than ten cows producing 900 litres each," said Villalon. He also pointed out the increasing use of byproducts in feed manufacturing such as residues from oilseed in biofuel production. Some 40% of animal feed already consist of byproducts from other industries, he added.
Kurlab Kimsri of Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL (CPF) also spoke for the meat industry on the panel. CPF was the first enterprise worldwide to generate eco-balances for chicken meat and to label its products accordingly. Between 2008 and 2011 the company managed to reduce energy consumption, emissions, employee illnesses, as well as resource and land consumption by up to 10%. The feed processing ratio of its chickens was also reduced from 1.8 to 1.65 over the course of a decade. "For 100 million chickens, this saves 36,000 metric tons of feed and reduces CO2 emissions by 18,000 metric tons," Kimsri said.
Dr. Thomas Kaufmann from the Evonik Health & Nutrition Business Unit presented the importance of feed amino acids for sustainable animal nutrition. He explained that one kilogram of DL-methionine replaces up to 260 kilograms of soy meal.
Evonik has developed the AMINOFootprint® calculator as a tool to design animal feed that is balanced in terms of nutritional physiology, economy, and ecology. The company''s "low-emission farm" concept points even further into the future. It involves the energy conversion of plant-based waste materials, using the SEPURAN® Green membrane technology of Evonik for biogas purification.