NOTE: Good article by Joanna Blythman, the award-winning food journalist and writer. For more on the RTRS:
What's behind the "responsible" soy label? Detective Pig finds out
http://bit.ly/jXQin7
Growing Opposition to RTRS
http://bit.ly/jQt7co
13 Reasons Why the RTRS Won't Provide Responsible or Sustainable Soy
http://bit.ly/kjobXa
See also: http://www.toxicsoy.org/
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Article on industrial poultry, GM feed and the RTRS
Joanna Blythman
The Grocer, 21 May 2011

The only redeeming feature of the overbearing power of supermarkets is that they can use their muscle for the good. A perfect opportunity for such intervention is presented by the British Poultry Council (BPC), which is toying with the idea of dumping its long-standing guarantee that members use only non-GM poultry feed. The BPC says that this "unsustainable" rule is "imposed by retailers". It's too hard to source non-GM soya, it complains.

This is nonsense. 40 per cent of Brazilian soya is certified non-GM so if poultry producers can't get their act together to source some from the perfectly efficient companies importing it, they clearly aren't trying.

Any fool can see that BPC producers would be slitting their own throats if they went down the GM path. Exposés by Jamie and Hugh of sordid UK broiler sheds left the British chicken industry with a chronic PR problem. Add a further GM taint, and chicken could become Public Meat Enemy Number One. Why on earth would retailers stand back and let that happen?
 
These days, food production needs to be seen to be clean and green. Note that the Swedes have just decided to use only GM-free feed for their pigs, closing off the last route of GM feed into their food chain.

Why? The GM story just keeps getting worse. Scientific evidence that GM crops have negative effects on laboratory animals - damage to the immune system, kidneys, liver, and negative impacts on fertility - is stacking up. Understandably, consumers may feel that if GM foods aren't that great for their pet rodents, they themselves would rather not eat them.

Far from putting food on the Third World plate, shocking evidence is emerging from charities, such as Christian Aid, that in countries like India, buying GM seed has forced poor farmers into a spiral of debt, pesticide pollution and crop failure. Some estimates suggest that thousands of farmers there have committed suicide as a result.

The BPC could try to bury its unpopular volte face by signing up to the Roundtable on Responsible Soya (RTRS), which belies its name by permitting the use of GM soya. But then, the RTRS is being outed by environment groups as a crude food industry exercise in greenwashing. Better the supermarkets have a quiet word in the BPC's ear now, before it makes a catastrophic error.