Germany: Retailers demand GMO-free feed again

The German poultry industry and food retailers are talking about the reintroduction of GMO-free feed. German retailers wish for the poultry meat industry and the egg producers to return entirely to feeding animals without GE food. This should be the case again from January 2015. The German Poultry Association, however, does not want to commit itself to this date, Lebensmittelzeitung reports. The result of a jointly agreed study needs to be reviewed first.
 

Earlier this year, the German Poultry Association had declared to withdraw from GMO-free feeding. This step was based on the supply shortage of non-GMO soy, the risk of contamination and the legal uncertainty associated with it and came after more than a decade of GMO-free feeding. Especially Kaufland, Rewe and Edeka did not agree, and even large members of the association - like Plukon and Deutsche Frühstücksei - did not follow. Now the association’s CEO Thomas Janning Janning does not exclude the return of the entire industry to non-GMO feed. The working group Soy in Animal Feed was founded, where retailer representatives defined the long-term goal to abandon genetic engineering in the feed of the entire animal husbandry, including for pigs and cattle. The production of poultry meat is given priority. If the working group comes to the conclusion that GMO-free feeding is possible, an industry agreement is possible, starting with the soy harvest in 2015. The full article is available here.
 

Peter Melchett, Soil Association Policy Director, comments that this move proves that claims by all the UK supermarkets apart from Waitrose, namely that it is impossible to get non-GM animal feed, are completely wrong. The sooner most UK supermarkets stop misleading their customers, and either source non-GM animal feed, or label their products accurately as being fed on GM, the better, he adds.