COTANCE and UECBV deepen their dialogue in a successful 2nd encounter
Europe’s tanners and Livestock & Meat Traders met on February 20, 2020, the second day of Lineapelle in a follow up meeting of the first encounter between the two sectors held in the October 2019 edition. There a ground-breaking objective was set by the two sides with regard to traceability, namely, to achieve by 2025 the tracing back of all hides and skins up to the abattoir where they were obtained.
In this 2nd encounter between Meat and Leather producers, only the European industry organisations– COTANCE and UECBV – met for advancing on two major issues of common interest: Animal Welfare & Traceability.
Europe is a leader at Worldwide level with regard to Animal Welfare legislation and standards.
Also, in terms of traceability and safety, the European livestock value chain, is a model for many countries and this know-how might be scaled up also to hides and skins.
COTANCE and UECBV have been discussing how best to respond to increased market demands for greater accountability with regard to Animal Welfare upstream from the leather industry. Their dialogue has yielded a pioneering agreement to map existing Certification and Audit systems available in the Livestock Value chain and to understand how these standards would link up with a potential leather, hide and skin full traceability.
Their interest in working together in this area is clearly on Hides (bovine) and Skins (ovine, goats). In this respect, both sides acknowledged with pleasure the award by Spanish Governmental authorities of EU financial support to the SELAMBQ Project. This initiative aims at tracing, tracking and identifying the causes of specific skin defects that impair the quality of Spanish Entrefino leather to the detriment of all links in the supply chain.
It will lead to the development of a guide of good practice for promoting improvements and is developed in Spain by all the value chain partners of the Spanish Entrefino leather supply chain (INTEROVIC, ANAFRIC, ACEXPIEL) with the support of COTANCE, UNIC and FFTM.
COTANCE and UECBV reaffirmed their cooperation in a number of areas that are addressed in the Commission’s Green Deal and Farm2Fork strategy, as well as in the Circular Economy Action Plan and Research and Innovation initiatives.
They agreed to convene again at the next Lineapelle (23-25 September 2020) for reviewing progress.
Milan, 20 February 2020
