Organic feed availability

Following a fraud detection in feed products from the Ukraine earlier this year, there are new, severe, controls that have been imposed by the European Commission on all organic products coming from the Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states. This means that there will be significantly less product coming from the affected regions for a considerable time.

The impact at the time was unclear and the current overall view from feedmills seems to be that there will be adequate supplies of organic cereals for the UK market.

It is likely that much less organic certified protein and cereal will come out of Ukraine in the future and the supplies are now coming from China and several smaller countries which have reduced the variety of proteins available. Fortunately, so far the price has gone up a considerably smaller amount than expected, with no shortages reported.

We have been actively working with operators in the supply chain and are raising awareness with supermarkets. We are putting pressure on Defra to allow other protein sources to be used in organic farming and our Head of Farming Liz Bowles has submitted an Expression of interest for funding to research how to improve the quality of UK cereals and to reduce the barriers to the production of organic cereals.

Ultimately shorter supply chains and less reliance on imported protein feeds would be beneficial for UK producers where possible.

This reliance can be reduced by producing more protein crops in the UK and, where possible, maximising home produced feeds.

Please contact your certification officer if you have any questions.