IFEEDER’s Sustainability Road Map Framework & Strategic Objectives

The Institute for Feed Education and Research’s Sustainability Road Map effort provides a framework to support the U.S. animal food industry, guide the journey and measure progress. The IFEEDER framework can also be adapted and customized to individual organizations.

Each organization’s framework should be customized to fit that organization’s vision, mission, values and culture, making it easier for all employees and suppliers to see how their roles contribute to building trust, reducing risks and creating value

Goals for Phase 2 of the Sustainability Road Map Project

The following strategic objectives were established to guide Phase 2 of IFEEDER’s Sustainability Road Map work. The objectives were created with insights from the Phase 1 work, undertaken in 2022, the September 2022 Feed Systems Sustainability Summit, the Sustainability Road Map advisory committee members and other animal food value chain stakeholders. More details are available here.

OBJECTIVE 1: Data & Information Management Strategy

Assessment of the animal food sustainability space and subsequent stakeholder engagement during the first phase of IFEEDER’s Sustainability Road Map effort and insights gleaned from the 2022 Feed Systems Sustainability Summit illuminated a need to pursue alignment and consistency in supporting data and information management strategies. IFEEDER will play a leading and collaborative role within the industry to advance the quantity and quality of data to support the industry ‘s efforts in meeting the measurement, reporting and verification needs of its customers across several key indicators and metrics.

OBJECTIVE 2: Advance Sustainability Research

With today’s focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for future water scarcity, the animal food industry needs to better communicate the environmental benefits of innovations in the pipeline for animal food ration development, ingredients and additives. Corporate and academic research regarding the benefit, efficacy, cost and on-farm value of those innovations is a significant component of their development, whereas considerations for their impact on sustainability may not be. Quantifying this impact would help the industry better communicate opportunities to stakeholders and place greater value on our role in meeting their sustainability objectives.

OBJECTIVE 3: Coordinate Life Cycle Assessments

Life cycle assessments (LCA) are a systematic analysis of the environmental impacts associated with the stages of a product’s life used to analyze the product’s overall environmental load, usually with an aim to prioritize improvements on products or processes or to compare between products for internal decisions. LCAs are a growing trend in the United States to support customer and consumer demands for accountability and transparency in the supply chain. IFEEDER seeks to take a leading and collaborative role within the U.S. food, animal and pet food industry to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of LCAs to measure and make progress on impacts that are important to our customers and industry.

OBJECTIVE 4: Educational Resources, Training & Collateral

The Animal Food Industry Sustainability Toolkit provides an ‘on-ramp’ of practical tools, resources and insights that can be put into action now for companies seeking to solidify sustainability’s role in their corporate cultures and decision-making. The first version, released in January 2023, will be expanded upon as additional resources are developed. The ability to clearly articulate the value proposition for each sector in the U.S. animal food value chain has been identified as a need that would further enable members to advance their sustainability strategies.