GM - Is it time for a little honesty?

By Martin Humphrey, Director Humphrey Feeds

We have been told that GM technology offers the potential to increase productivity through yield improvements, drought resistance etc, but any benefits have been inadequately presented to the consumer – that was one of the key messages from the ABN Live event at Stoneleigh in the early summer.

In the old days there was no genetic modification (where the genes of one organism, whether it be animal or vegetable, are inserted into another organism).

I was asked, with a small group of other raw material buyers, to assist a major retailer to develop their GM strategy. As a team, with the retailer representative, we visited America, Canada, Brazil and India to better understand the GM/Non GM supply chain.

Until the GM shadow emerged, soya for the period November to April was from Northern Hemisphere sources – the US, and from May to October, from Southern Hemisphere – Brazil and Argentina.

The Americans quickly adopted GM in the belief that it provided reduced costs stating that we would need to pay a significant premium for Non GM. Argentina quickly embraced GM technology, but Brazil forbade its use, however our team knew that GM seeds were smuggled across the border from Argentina.

Initial decisions were taken to confine the areas from which Non GM was obtained to the middle and northern parts of the Brazil.

The retailer policy focused on removing the potential for gross GM contamination from conventional feeds by only sourcing Non GM soya, however a veil was drawn over the following areas:

a. Oils, many of which were processed from soya, the majority of which was GM

b. Vitamins, a number of which have `GM steps’ in their production process

c. Synthetic Amino Acids, essential protein building blocks, a number of which also have `GM steps’ in their production process

So actually the Non GM diets that have used in the poultry industry have not been totally Non GM. Echoes of the `little bit pregnant’ argument?

The situation changed with revised feed declaration legislation a couple of years ago. Whereas previously compounders were required to state Non GM raw materials, a switch was made, with the assumption that all raw materials were Non GM unless specifically stated, and compounders now had to state GM raw materials. Whilst vitamins and amino acids have somehow missed the GM labelling – oil has not. Look at your declarations, they already state that conventional feed has some GM ingredients! As any producer currently `in conversion’ to organic knows this statement that `oil is now GM’ is causing problems.

When the Non GM policy was enforced nearly a decade ago there was a lot of Non GM soya in Brazil, but over the years the proportion of GM has increased, and is well over 60% of the soya grown in Brazil.

Part of the problem for this reducing availability of Non GM may lie with the original strategy in the UK to confine the requirement for Non GM soya diets to the poultry sector (meat and eggs), whilst releasing the Pig sector from the burden of the cost, as at the time it was undergoing one of its `difficult periods’.

The UK uses 2 million tonne of soya per annum, of which only a proportion was used by the poultry sector. Some retailers in France and Germany also required Non GM, but in a country as large as Brazil with annual production of 70 mln tonne, demand from the UK really was inconsequential. Combine limited demand with small premiums for the Non GM, and it is highly understandable why the availability of the Non GM has reduced, as the area on which it has grown retreats to certain regions of Brazil.

The trouble is that as the amount of GM grown in Brazil increases, the ability to keep the fields, the stores, the factories and the boats free from contamination is increasingly hard.

I would say that we are seeing contamination in our analysis of the Non GM soya coming over – some of it has some GM DNA. Not all samples are GM positive, but some of them are. We are not alone I know of many other compounders with the same results, in fact any diligent compounder will be testing their `Non GM’ soya, and will be coming up with some uncomfortable positives for the presence of GM.

We are all paying a premium for Non GM soya of circa £30, sometimes more, and yet the last two years have seen increasing levels of GM contamination, and that is only expected to worsen with the next new crop of Brazilian soya in May 2010.

Some importers may claim that their soya is Non GM, but they cannot guarantee it, and the likelihood is that some of it will be contaminated.

So what really is the point of paying a premium for a production which does not robustly deliver its primary objective of being Non GM?

The British Poultry Council, representing most white meat suppliers does not think that it is worth continuing with the false impression of Non GM, and Peter Thornton the CEO of Noble informed the poultry industry at EPIC recently that Noble would not be able to continue requiring Non GM soya in the feed of flocks supplying its eggs. I understand their honesty; as an industry, we cannot pretend any more that we are actually delivering a Non GM feed, not just because the soya has a high likelihood of being GM, but also because it never was Non GM through some of the other smaller addition raw materials.

So can we have a bit of honesty please, and not perpetuate the untruth of Non GM for conventional diets?

Organic diets should be unaffected by this decision, as the sector has always prevented the use of GM varieties.