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Public-Private engagement
The Crucial Interplay between Public and Private

Policies directed towards our industry are intended to provide confidence in a safe and secure animal food supply chain.

Ultimately, well-designed policies and regulations set the foundation for strong markets: creating confidence, security and a level playing field.

They can also address issues that the private sector cannot solve due to profit requirements. For example, maintaining legal systems or roads.

Ultimately, well-designed policies and regulations set the foundation for strong markets: creating confidence, security and a level playing field.

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80%

of IFIF 2025 stakeholder survey respondents perceive cost increases as the highest barrier to sustainability.
But the perception may be a higher barrier than actual costs.

pain before gain

Good policies can give strong market guidance that helps our industry overcome a significant systemic barrier, one that we all experience in our own personal lives. That barrier is that, to make things better in the medium and long-term, short-term investments are often required ('pain before gain').

Because regulations drive pre-competitive action, they can ensure that no single company bears the brunt of costs that will help themselves and the whole industry be more resilient and profitable over time (along with helping all people and communities).

Many inconsistent policies can, however, create barriers and inefficiencies within a global animal food supply chain.

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System Map

Public-Private Engagement:
Driving Good Sustainability Actions

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Lets explore the interplay between public and private sector around environmental sustainability and a habitable planet.

The World Economic Forum estimates that global GDP declines by approximately 12% for every 1°C increase in average temperature, with losses accelerating sharply beyond that point.

Agriculture sits on the front line of this risk. Increasing exposure to extreme flooding, drought, heat stress, and pests and diseases, as well as growing disruption to transport and logistics, means that adaptation at a system level will directly shape the resilience, cost structure, and continuity of individual businesses across the feed and food supply chain.

At the same time, mitigation requires a different dynamic. In response to rising climate risk, leading industry players have set voluntary targets and invested in reducing their greenhouse gas footprints. These actions often require individual companies to absorb near-term costs while the benefits accrue broadly across the system.

Without alignment, shared frameworks, and industry-wide approaches, accompanied by strong policy action mitigation efforts risk becoming fragmented, costly, and inefficient.

Progress on both fronts, system-level adaptation and coordinated mitigation, is essential to building a resilient feed industry.

As we've seen, many of these improvements, particularly efficiencies and circularity, reduce operating expenses because they reduce the resources needed to produce feed.

Meanwhile, alliances and/or pre-competitive actions can help lower the cost and complexity burden on any one company for changes that benefit the whole industry.

It is only governments, however, that can make sure that companies investing in actions that benefit the whole industry and society more broadly are on even market footing with less innovative or responsible companies.

This is a critical role, especially in such a low margin industry.

This can take the form of incentivising or regulating for best-practices, or sharing transition costs.

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Shared Public-Private Mandate

Across Belgium, Denmark, and South Korea, public–private partnerships are driving science-led improvements in the sustainability of the animal feed industry.

In Belgium, collaboration between feed producers, livestock companies, and public research institutions is advancing precision nutrition, circular feed ingredients, and emissions-measurement frameworks that support both environmental performance and competitiveness.

South Korea is similarly leveraging coordinated action between government, academia, and industry to accelerate innovation in low-emission feed technologies, data-driven feeding systems, and scalable sustainability standards suited to high-intensity production systems.

Denmark provides a complementary example, where a methane-reducing feed additive has been implemented through cooperation between a major dairy company, farmers, and government cost-sharing mechanisms.

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This public-private alignment supports market access, mitigates regulatory risk, and creates new value streams for feed innovations that reduce methane emissions.

 

Incentivising Cow Methane Reductions in Canada

We see another example using a different public-private mechanism in Canada. Under the Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System feedlot operators can earn offset credits by implementing diet reformulation, improved animal management, or other mitigation strategies. Enteric fermentation in cattle is a significant methane source.

Feed companies supplying Canadian producers have benefit from this shift, aligning service offerings, ration formulations, nutrient efficiency, and emission mitigation measures with governmental frameworks.

Interestingly, the specialty feed ingredient from the previous example was only approved to qualify for offset credits in 2024. This highlights that regulatory barriers can block important sustainability innovations if they don’t keep pace with innovation.

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System Map

Public-Private Engagement:
Walking the Road to 2050 Together

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The stronger the industry actions, the more basis for public-private partnerships and supports like these examples that support our industry and society at the same time.

As we think about these innovations, we also have to share for everyone with reasonable questions about the health impacts of new innovation is the science-based development process.

We all know that chemical-based medicines are healthy in the right context. Similarly, chemical, and organic, specialty ingredients are being used in healthy contexts.

In fact, many of them can also improve animal health while also reducing emissions.

The challenge for all parties is when voluntary targets and efforts do not match the improvements expected by the public, policymakers or planetary boundaries. This erodes trust and drives a pressure to regulate versus support.

Public pressure has pushed many governments today to increasing policies related to animal production including feed, nutrition, and livestock methane emissions.

While most of these policy efforts to-date are focused on incentives (except for reporting requirements), emission reduction requirements paired with fines are seeing increasing pressure from the public and government targets as the world passed 1.5°C in 2025.

Poorly designed policies can become a barrier to sustainability innovations reaching the market.

However, in IFIF's 2025 global survey, only ~30% of respondents saw regulations today as a major barrier (although these numbers were higher in Europe and Latin America).

What is very clear is proactive investment has a far better ROI than investment driven by penalties.

In part because of the outright financial costs, but also in the missed opportunities for supportive public-private partnerships like the Arla Foods-Denmark one where every stakeholder benefits.

As we've been exploring, feed has many sustainability solutions already in the world, and/or waiting on the support to scale. Proactively engaging with policymakers to scale what we know works is a best practice.

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