GM-free feed will boost costs

By Philip Clarke

COMPOUND feed costs may have to rise by more than 25% if European manufacturers insist on producing GM-free rations.

So far it has been easy enough to supply relatively small volumes of non-GM raw material for niche markets in France and the UK, says Klaus Schumacher of German commodity trader Toepfer International.

Even this requires us to build in a tolerance of 2-5% for our non-GM soya, as there is no such thing as totally GM-free, he told journalists in Hamburg last week.

These supplies carry a premium of 6-8%.

But the level of investment in storage and haulage required to provide non-GM products in large volume would add 25-30% to the cost of animal feed, he claims.

The speed of expansion of GM soya in recent years outside the EU shows how difficult it is becoming to source non-GM supplies.

In the USA, 51% of the soya area is down to the new varieties, while in Argentina the rate has grown from 2% to 80% in just two years.

Even in Brazil, which sometimes claims to be GM-free, he reckons 15% of production is GM.

All Toepfers non-GM soya comes from north-east Brazil. But anything close to the border with Argentina cannot be guaranteed.

He believes it would be possible to source about 1m tonnes of non-GM soya from Brazil for shipment, out of a total EU requirement of 50 million tonnes.

It will not be possible for the EU to disassociate itself from the world trend to increased use of GMs.

German Agricultural Society president Philip von dem Bussche agreed, saying farmers should not give in to pressure groups like Greenpeace.

We are going to need these technologies in the future.

He was concerned that WTO rules would make it impossible for the EU to exclude GMs and, as such, producers could be held to ransom by environmental pressure groups.

They will demand that we dont grow these crops, but consumers will still buy imported GM products at the discount stores and we will be elbowed out of the market, he said.