So, just to give a very brief intro, Marion and Geoffrey both work at Royal Cannon. Marion leads the Royal Cannon Global Climate Change strategy. She's an engineer from the Agronomic School in Montpellier.
She's worked as a consultant for FMCGs and for the European Commission to improve the environmental and social impacts of the food and feed sector. But since 2018, she's led Royal Cannon's climate, changed ambition at global scale, driving various initiatives across the business. I thoroughly enjoyed a presentation, a virtual presentation that they gave, I think it was September October time.
And Marion is fortunate enough also to live in the south of France in Montpellier. We're gonna be holding our veterinary green discussion forum very close to there, and it is an area, you know, particularly the Camargo that's, in danger of climate change, so, grace the work that Royal Cannon are doing in that whole area. And then Jeffreyer leads the Royal Cannon Global Climate programme for R&D.
He's working on recipes that decarbonize and coordinate the approach with commercial formulation and sustainability teams. Jeffrey graduated from the ENITIAA. Food Science and engineering school in France.
He's passionate about improving products and nutrition for cats and dogs, and he's been a long-term employee of Royal Cannon going back to 2003. He's enjoyed several positions as R&D process and product scientist, and building on this solid experience as an expert formulator within Royal Canon Manufacturing Network, he led the global formulation team for six years. But since 2023, he's taken the role of formulation sustainability experts, and Geoffrey similarly lives close to the faculty in Nim in the south of France.
. Marion and Jeffrey, so pleased that you could take time out of your busy schedule to kick us off on the Doherty sustainability summit and it's over to you, just feel free to share your screen and we can get cracking. Thanks so much. Mercy.
Thank you very much, Antony. I will start, welcome everybody and thank you for, for having us. This is a pleasure.
So I am more than the rule that I have from Roanin. I'm also the proud owner of two cats, or ants, and so you actually, we are not here to talk about, Ra Canin, we are here to talk about health. And we wanted to share what are the learnings that we had while working on this and here today, sustainability and health, as you mentioned, Anthony, are one single thing.
And when we talk about sustainability, actually there are 3 pillars. It's not only about planets. That we hear about pollution, we hear about climate change, pesticides, etc.
It's also about two other things. It's thriving people to make sure that the people we are working with and for, you know, are thriving, so for, it can be your, your client, it can be your supplier, it can be the people working for you in your clinics. And also pet well-being.
So this is really this really resonates with what you just said and the purpose of this conversation. So here I want to, we want to focus on one thing that is climate change. So I'm sure that you all know the World Health organisation.
And this organisation said that climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, the single biggest health threat. So there is no doubt that it is the same for for humans and for pets. So this is why we are addressing climate change as a big challenge that we will have within the organisation.
So what's the impact of climate change on, on pets? So you know, in climate change, you will have extreme events, you will have more heat waves, and such like that. So what it will cause for pets, it's more heat stress.
You will have also increased vector borne diseases in our area where we live, you know, there were lots of for the past 5 years, I think there are much more mosquitoes than before, and this kind of animals, of course, you know, bring disease with them, so this is something that we need to pay them to adopt. Malnutrition as well with with heat waves and draw and scarcity of water in general, there will be, there is a possibility that the yield decrease and you know, you all know that there there is an increasing number of humans on Earth and pets as well. While if the yield decrease, basically the cake will be smaller.
So how are we going to share this? And finally, anxiety. I'm sure that you have all things the fire in California and you can imagine how stress that it can be to live in this area for both human and pets.
That's something that we will see increasingly. So we need to do two things first to limit this to happen and also to adapt in the future. So when we look at the impact of pets.
So you can look at the, you can calculate the impacts of having a pets during one year. And if you compare it to sweets, sweets habitant, for, for instance, you see that, you know, you have dogs and you have cats that you can, that's the impact of, of pets. So when you deep dive into this impact, what are the causes of this impact?
So 60% of it come from the feed that we gave them. That's why come from the, come from the care. The other learning that we have as well is that the bigger the animal is, of course, the higher food, which is logic, right, because everything comes from the feed.
So the bigger the animal is, the more he is eating. So of course if is increasing. What what can a veterinarian do?
The first thing to do, the first action as a veterinarian, as as a citizen, is to educate yourself. I read books, . Share with, with talk to colleagues, go to webinar like this one, etc.
That's super important. That's the first actions that you can do for sustainability. And in the case of veterinarians, I'm sure that you may, you know, these calculators.
There are two that are available online that can help you calculate the footprints of your clinics so that you know what is your impact so you can measure where you are today, but also see where are your biggest contributor in the footprints so that you know it helps knowing where you need to act and then of course measure your progress over time. Then how you can reduce the impact that you have on the environment. The first action is the choice of feeds, and we will a deep dive on this with Geoffrey.
The second one, of course, is to prevent overfeeding. Overfeeding has a lot of bad effects both on health and on footprints because of course the more they hit, as we said earlier, the the highest the footprint is. So if you prevent overfeeding, this helps on a lot of topics, so health, climate change, and And, and any suitability changes that we face.
Another one is the use of anaesthetic gas. So you know the gas that we are using, they have some impact on climate change. And so you can choose gas with low impact, with low carbon footprints, or you can, the way the protocol that you use can have an importance as well.
So you can, you, you can decrease your footprint by choosing low carbon gas. And the last one is about waste management in general. So we use in that practise, we use a lot of seagull use, .
Plastics. So how can we reduce that and help recycle that kind of plastics? I will not deep dive today on on the three topics, you know, I want to think to talk to you about something that is the heart of our role as well, and it's about the choice of feed.
So how has that can you choose or help customer to choose the right feed that will have a lower impact on the planet. And now I will hand over to Geoffrey with our sustainable nutrition specialist Geoffrey. Thank you, Mario.
So Marion demonstrated that the first action important is to educate, and then after, of course, we want to reduce the climate change by reducing our impact on it. So a question for you if we about pet food, do you know what is the biggest contributor in terms of carbon footprint? Is it packaging, raw materials, facilities for factories, or supply?
And to answer this question, we were, we went through a global life cycle analysis analysing the impact of returning from upstream, the raw materials, to kill the consumer, and yeah, you can turn to the answer and we get this next time. We get this, these results, which is the split of carbon emissions, on, on activities, and you can see that in 2022, we had 65% of our emissions coming from raw materials. So.
Clearly the very biggest part of our emissions are coming from ingredients themselves. So this is true for Rayake also deeply linked to the product portfolio we are putting on the market, which is mainly made of dry product and wet products, and it could vary if you go to next. You can see with different technologies the impact of the diet of the food is clearly different.
And you have here different technologies and the impact in terms of carbon intensity per energy of food. So if you take your cat or your dog every day, whatever the food or the brand you will provide, you will give, you will give the same amount of energy. So here it's really to compare the technologies and from dry to wet there is an increase of carbon emissions and you go to fresh frozen and so on, it's increasing again.
So there is a ratio which is roughly 20%. 20 times more. So really, a way to, to adjust and to reduce emissions is also to, to select the carbon intensity of the product because when you go to the right on this slide, you go to a high lower carbon intensity, higher carbon intensity, sorry, and higher, .
Lower energy content, sorry. So, if you click, you see that we prefer high energy density diets which are less emitting. So going back to ingredients because we saw this is a main contributor, we will see how we measure the climate impacts with life cycle analysis and after we'll see what can be the levers, some examples to reduce our carbon emissions.
So first, the measure of climate. On ingredients. There are 4 main parts.
So the first part is to know where the raw material is grown. So the land use change, you have to click a lot. So the land use change, we don't want to get raw material coming from deforestation, for instance.
This is a big carbon waste, so we have to select exactly where the raw material is coming from. After we want to check the farmer production, so how the raw material is grown and one of the main. Impactful parts of the, the cereal or or agricultural part is coming from upstream emissions due to a nitrogen cycle with fertilisers from petrol industry.
So this is very important, to, pay attention to, to this. And after, of course, the raw material will be, transported and processed. So we pay attention to each part of this.
And if you move to the next one, I will show you two different examples. On the left you have the wheat flour impact on the right, the rice, the broken rice part. And there are the emissions are coming from two main parts the field and land use change in blue.
And processing and machinery in green. So if we compare wheat flour, the higher energy usage is in, in the processing and machinery parts when for rice, this is on the field that there are more carbon emissions, and this is clearly due to the technical, to, to grow the rice with the flow of irrigation and methane emissions. So clearly you see that the field and mandu change is much higher for broken rice here.
So when we know now the impact of each raw materials. There is also one. Just back thank you.
There is one adding part in the in the emission of each raw material, which is the way to measure it, which is linked to economic allocation. So it's very important because byproducts are less impacting than mainstream products. So what are different levers, next, yeah, to, to reduce our greenhouse gas.
The first, it was when we looked at the raw material, the deforestation we want to not to buy any raw material coming from deforestation for sure. The land use change is key. Also the way to grow, raw materials, from intensive agriculture to regenerative agriculture.
There are a big, big, reduction of carbon emissions possible. And after that, of course, commercial teams, so the purchasing team can select the origin of the raw material, making sourcing optimisation and reducing the impact of the raw material. Once we have the lowest impact factor on carbon for each ingredient, we can start to make recipient optimisation.
And on the recipe optimisation in Ray, we input this data into our formulation software and we are able to optimise formulas such as on price on the greenhouse gas emissions so that we optimise to the minimum level of emissions for the formulas. This is limited because we have at the moment a current raw material portfolio. In addition to go further, purchasing team is prospecting and developing alternative ingredients with lower carbon footprints, and this is also going into red optimisation.
And of course, the design and the selection of the technology is a key to to reduce our carbon footprint. So these are the levels we are activating to reduce our carbon footprint in right. And now just some questions for you.
Is it right or wrong that for animal-based ingredients, bigger species impact more than smaller ones. So for example, beef impacts more than pork, which impacts more than chicken. Is that true?
So yes or no, you can answer in the chat, so that's right. Another question, plant-based protein ingredients are impacting less than animal-based protein. Is it right or wrong?
So there there is a tricky part. So this is not. A true that it's wrong, and it's because of the economic allocation on animal-based protein.
We are using byproducts of human food industry in pet food, so definitely the impact of carbon is much lower when plant-based protein can be competing with human foods. So that's why the impact factor is really not much higher for animalbased protein. Another question on the fresh ingredients, are they impacting less than dried processed ingredients?
So it's not obvious there once again, so it's wrong, because of byproduct, but also because of the process and packaging. So, the, there is, the dry processing regions are less impact. And the last question, alternative ingredients helps to accelerate GAD reduction, so greenhouse gas, reduction.
Is it true or not? And this is right, and we are putting lots of energy to develop Iga, insects, biomass, and others to really be able to substitute to other raw materials, common raw materials that are having a higher impacts. So that's it for the, the ingredients.
So what are the key takeaways, as Marion mentioned, the first and, priority is educate yourself, your colleagues and pet owners, prevent overfeeding. And waste, of course, and prefer higher energy density diets, so the technology is key and foster a lower carbon ingredients and processes. So that's what we wanted to share with you.
Thank you for listening. Thank you so much Marion and Jeffrey, that's fascinating, you know, I, I, I'm really impressed with all the work that Mars as a group are doing around pet health, and I think, you know, I remember when I qualified in early 1990, we were talking about premium dog food and you know, we're using really good quality ingredients, but this is, I think where circularity's coming in, as you said, Jeffrey, using byproduct. The stuff that really isn't being used by the human food chain.
This is actually saving things from just being tossed away, they are being used, so it's, it's great from a circularity perspective, isn't it, with the with the animal byproducts. Yeah, definitely. In fact, pet food by design is focusing on byproducts, so it's, we can say a chance, but also it's a challenge because we want to, to decrease even more than what we are doing today, and we understand that we are quite low by design.
Yeah. I, I also, obviously the talk was very much around carbon, which I, I get, but I know from work that I've looked at that you are doing, a lot of the places where you buy your grain from and and the other products, you know, the farms that you're working for are working very much in regenerative practises. So we're also seeing that increase in biodiversity because biodiversity is.
I think ignored a little bit in the political discussions and everybody seems obsessed with carbon, but actually, biodiversity is, is so, so important, and if we're not careful, we can be planting trees in the wrong place, you know, with the wrong species, not native species, having, you know, maybe a reduction in carbon, but if that's cau causing a reduction in biodiversity. That's not a good thing, so I, I know you're doing quite a lot in that kind of biodiversity space as well, which, you know, from my perspective is is equally important. Yeah, definitely we are really fostering to work with farmers to turn to regenerative agriculture, yeah.
Just see if there are any questions for a couple of minutes, maybe one or two questions. Let me see if there's anything in . In the chat or in the question box.
Oh yeah, we've got a question here from Alex. Mhm. Who has actually been to our veterinary green discussion forum, so a, a good friend of biodiversity and sustainability, said thank you Jeffrey and Marian.
In the last slide you mentioned alternative ingredients including algae, insects, biomass. Please could you give some biomass examples? Yes.
If you want to go ahead. Hm. If you want, I, I can.
So for, for biomass, we are prospecting biomass to, to provide either protein or, or fat or lipids. In fact, so there are different, different approach. On the Maybe.
Do you want to add any more into that? No, that's fine. We are investigating a lot of, a lot of things, including some crazy ones.
It doesn't mean that we will include everything, but we need to investigate and work with a lot of researchers and start up to see what makes sense. And of course it needs to reach our quality nutritional standards, but we are really open on what can possibly be done because at some point we need to find alternative res anyway. We have no choice.
I think it was really interesting in the UK we had a . An introduction last week of a a food that was being made in the lab to be like chicken. And so I, I, as you've said, I don't think we should close any doors to things.
I think we should investigate things and and look at what works and what doesn't work. So that was definitely something interesting as well. We've got another question .
From Vi Guinnessuaran, who said, what is your view on plant-based protein replacement of animal byproducts in pet food? I think there was an answer within the presentation, but obviously there are some people who want to feed vegetarian, vegan pet foods to their dogs, probably less so their cats. What, what's the feeling there, it's not necessarily .
You know, less carbon neutral, is it to feed. In fact, we have very good plant-based protein, so in terms of quality, in terms of nutrition, so definitely this is easy to formulate with we can make it, but this is not necessarily going in the carbon reduction way. So we, but, but there are some plant-based protein that's We can have a very low, carbon intensity.
And for this one, definitely we are working on it on the developing, and pushing it to, to, to enter the formulas. But as as we said earlier, the, the byproducts from animal industry are available and we, use them. As long as the carbon footprint is is interesting for sure.
Thank you so much, Jeffrey, and thank you so much, Marianne, for that er fantastic talk, for the work that you're doing as well. So please do keep up the good work and obviously as a just as a final, mention, we are coming down to Royal Cannon in June to run our veterinary green discussion forum, which we're very excited about, 3 years in the UK, 4th year in June in . In in close to the Carmarg, er obviously also coming up to the campus to see you all, so, obviously I've met Marianne, but looking forward also to meeting you, Jeffrey, when we, when we get down to er to the campus and to the Carmarg in June, and obviously for those people who are listening.
Who like the sound of that, it's an event where we come together as a group to share ideas, you know, trying to work this all out on our own is difficult. When I look at some of the fabulous work that the Mars group generally are doing, they're really leading the field in this area. We need to go quicker, we need to do more, but you know, when we come together as a group to learn and teach each other, the, the hope is that we can move.
Even faster in collaboration, but really appreciate everything that you're doing at Royal Cannon and within the bigger group as well. Thank you. And we look forward to meeting you here.
So it's a Cmark is a great area from it's lots of nature, etc. And we, yeah, it will be a very, very good event, so I look forward to seeing you there. OK, and so thank you so much, Messy Auvoir and Abiento.
Take care. See you.