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GM animal feed
Weekly Times
21/02/05
The activist pressure on major poultry producers has been concerted, but it is not based on fact or the realities of the global GM crop area (Poultry giants ban GM, 16 February).
Interestingly, activists have been pushing for the chicken producers to source non-GM animal feed (soybean and maize) from Brazil. According to ABARE, Brazil is the world’s ninth largest food exporting country, and it has become the world’s second largest soybean producer behind the USA. All of the world’s six leading soybean producers are using gene technology in agriculture - four of them grew GM soybeans in 2003 (USA, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay), whilst the remaining two grew GM cotton varieties (India and China).
The latest global GM crop production statistics released by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) list Brazil as the fourth biggest producer of GM crops in 2003 with a 66 per cent increase in production from 2002. Five million hectares of GM soybean were grown in Brazil last year, representing 22 per cent of the national crop. What further stunts will be employed by activists as this GM area continues to increase within feed crops.
There is no scientific evidence to suggest GM animal feed poses any risk to human health and safety. Numerous scientific studies have been conducted around the world to evaluate the safety of GM animal feeds both on the animals themselves and their by-products. These studies overwhelmingly conclude that there is no effect from feeding approved GM crops to livestock and poultry on the nutritional value or safety of meat, milk and eggs. GM animal feed, like all feed, is broken down during digestion, so by-products from animals fed GM crops are no different to those from animals fed non-GM feed and as a result of this scientific reasoning, Australia’s labelling laws do not require the products derived from animals fed GM feed to be labelled as GM.
As for this being a consumer victory – were you consulted on this issue? Did you play a part in stunts outside supermarkets, at Ports or poultry company offices? Did you send a form letter to poultry producers from the Greenpeace website? I didn’t think so. Pressure from anti-GM lobby groups has resulted in this outcome. This is not a consumer victory, and Greenpeace claiming it in our name is false and misleading.
Would Greenpeace like to claim our positive experience with GM cotton, which as more than halved pesticide use each season since 1996, as a consumer victory too?
Paula Fitzgerald
Executive Director
Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited
Canberra
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