Indice
1. Before we dive into our discussion, Insights about you and your professional background
Iani is a practitioner in animal nutrition and have different involvements with the local and regional feed industry in several East European countries.
He is an independent advisory with over 25 years of extensive work in this field and he is currently the President of the Romanian Feed Association (ANFNC).
2. How can you describe the current feed industry in Europe?
Iani described the European feed industry as the seismograph of the world feed industry because of its complexities and the unevenness in technologies’ application within the European countries.
Meanwhile, the European feed industry is one of the world’s largest feed markets.
Yet, it is stagnating in terms of volume growth due to obstacles such as: increased competition, complicated legislation on livestock and the socio-economic challenges.
3.How can each one of these value chain partners: feed manufacturers and farmers contribute to the safe and sustainable use of feed ingredients?
Feed industry contributes to more resource-efficient farming by reducing the total amount of feed needed by farm animals while meeting their nutritional requirements.
Sustainability can also result in better use of agricultural and industrial by-products in feed.
Therefore, it will contribute to one of the main goals of the European Agriculture and feed industry of achieving Circular economy strategies along with the reduction of the environmental impact of livestock production.
4. According to your experience, what is the latest technology in the feed manufacturing sector that needs to be expanded around the world?
Feed industry is one of the most conservative industries.
However, there are several technologies available such as feed grade enzymes that improves ingredients’ digestibility and reduces manure’s harmful emissions.
Furthermore, several equipment suppliers provide new versions of old technologies such as particle size reduction.
Iani also believes in the equipment suppliers’ ambition to provide modern new technologies in the near future.
5. As an animal nutritionist, what is your approach in the determination of an efficient animal feed formula, which criteria are most relevant for you?
Feed formulation is a complex process that determines the volumes of ingredients and feed additives to create compound feeds.
Based on the results of feed formulation, each company determines its ingredient purchasing decisions.
Furthermore, Iani described the main criteria to achieve an efficient animal feed formula are to:
Know your ingredients, know your animal requirements and know how the final product looks like.
6. A serious price fluctuation is observed in animal feed around the world, according to you what are the main reasons behind this situation?
The current crisis is a situation that world feed industry has never faced before.
According to Iani, the following reasons are leading the Feed industry to experience disruptions in terms of ingredients supply and feed additives: Covid-19 pandemic, growing consumption of feed additives in China and labor shortage etc.
On the long term, the price fluctuations of the ingredients are also influenced by the weather and the increasing prices of fertilizers and energy.
7. As an animal nutritionist how did you deal with the price fluctuation while ensuring the balance in the animal feed formulation?
Which is an amino acids used for non-ruminant animals as poultry and pigs.
Moreover, the exceptional low volumes of Lysine produced are leading the main producer “China” to secure its domestic market first while Lysine exportations comes second.
Probably, in the next period “feed additives industry will go from just in time having Lysing to just in case” as stated by Iani.
8. Can you present for us soybean meal and its alternatives in animal feed industry ?
Animal feeding Soy is the number one source of protein in animal feed around the world and comes second in the ranking as the most nutritious ingredient after chicken eggs.
Thanks to their favorable climate, the dominant soy producing areas are North America and South America.
Moreover, the existing alternatives to soy meal in animal production are: rapeseed meal, sunflower meal, some corn byproducts.
Nevertheless, Iani highlighted the emphasis of considering the amino acid rebalance and economic efficiency when these alternatives of soy meal are to be adopted, “so I hope that we’ll never run out of soy in the world” as expressed by Iani.
Conclusions
Several external factors create a global pressure on feed raw material availability that directly affects animal production.
Consequently, each animal class feed formulation will experience adaptations in order to secure the ultimate goal of satisfying the global need of meat products.
Professionals of the European feed industry are thriving for a developed animal feed sector where technology and innovative solutions are adopted to overcome the environmental, economic and legislative threats.
Babbel for Business
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Iani A. Chihaia
Iani Chihaia is an expert in animal production & nutrition from Romania. With his passion for the extended agri-sector, he constantly promotes the efficient use of animal feed ingredients and technology in the area of compound feed manufacturing. His main objective is to support good and sustainable practices and develop new perspectives for livestock industry stakeholders.
