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About the IFIF/FAO Feed Manual

For the first time the feed industry has developed and published an international Feed Manual that focuses on issues of feed and food safety.

Joining together to make this happen are the International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF), the United Nation’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) which is a joint initiative for the FAO, World Bank, World Organisation for Animal Health and the World Trade Organisation.

The undertaking is certainly no small task, but with the adoption of the Codex Alimentarius Code of Practice on Good Animal Feeding in July 2005, and with the support of the STDF, a manual that explains in detail these new requirements is a worthy endeavour and one the world’s feed and food industries should fully embrace and lend their complete support.

While the Feed Manual is not meant to be an all-inclusive document, it does focus on the issues of feed and food safety and carries with it an Appendix containing the Code itself.

The International Feed Industry Federation aims to help meet the demand for safe and affordable food globally by:

• • Promoting a range of processing technologies and engineering in feed manufacture, from processes relying on general and skilled labour to fully-automated manufacturing systems
• • Making use of a wide range of co-products, by-products and raw materials from primary agricultural production, the food industry and industrial sources
• • Sponsoring university research into animal nutrition and other fields
• • Developing systems of feed marketing and distribution to support livestock farming in markets that span the globe
• • Playing a proactive role in educating consumers and regulatory authorities worldwide on a variety of issues that affect the supply of safe and affordable foods of animal origin

While all are of significant importance, it is the last of those five goals that is key and helps take the accomplishment of Codex Alimentarius and its new standards beyond the feed industry to provide consumers with the assurances for which they are increasingly looking for in regard to the safety of their food.

Safety is important for the expansion of international trade in feed products as well as food products of animal origin. Both food exporting and importing countries, which include virtually every country, can benefit from a level playing field to support the trade of safe food products.

Order the IFIF/FAO Feed Manual