Over 25,000 People Tell Ahold: Stop Misleading Consumers, Genetically Modified Toxic Soy is Not Responsible!

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Food

Photo opportunity: Public demonstration and petition handover

When: Thursday 9 Feb 2012, 12.30-13.30

Where: Amsterdam, Ahold CSR office, Piet Heinkade 167-173

On Thursday, 9 February multinational food retailer Ahold will receive the signatures of 26.000 people across Europe demanding an end to greenwash projects like the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS). Hugo Byrnes, director of product integrity at Ahold and the company’s representative in the soy roundtable, is invited to accept the signatures at 13.00 in front of his office.

The petition was kicked off in six countries in 2011 and targeted supermarket chains and food companies around Europe like Ahold, Aldi, Arla, Carrefour, Colruyt, Coop, Delhaize, Marks & Spencer and Unilever. International environmental groups including Friends of the Earth International, Action Aid, Global Forest Coalition and Food & Water Europe supported the action.[1]

Tjerk Dalhuisen of campaign group Toxicsoy.org says: “Europe imports 34 million tons of genetically modified (GM) soy every year, mainly to feed factory farmed animals. This system can never be called responsible and does not deserve a green label.”

“The criteria proposed by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) do not guarantee any level of ‘responsibility’. Soy plantations can still expand at the expense of forests and small farms; large scale pesticide spraying on soy farms will continue to poison people and the environment.”[2]

Eve Mitchell of Food & Water Europe added, “Food & Water Europe is concerned that the EU continues to rely far too heavily on imported soya from highly GM damaging monocultures, including to fuel factory farming. We cannot continue to export our environmental and social damage in this way, and consumers have a right to see on food labels where this imported GM soya is being used as animal feed.”

The RTRS is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund and the soy industry and companies with a vested interest in soy expansion such as the agribusiness and oil giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, BP and Shell. The Dutch food and animal feed industry are actively supporting the RTRS, and the Dutch government is providing financial support to the scheme in particular via the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH).

The soy roundtable has faced strong opposition from civil society for years. Hundreds of organisations from Europe and South America have signed declarations against the RTRS.[3] WWF and the Dutch NGOs involved in the RTRS have been criticised by nine Belgian NGOs.[4] In April 2011 the German platform of environmental organisations DNR (Deutsche Naturschutzring) sent a letter to WWF and asked them to withdraw from the RTRS stating, “DNR cannot accept that WWF protects a failed system of agriculture and secures the profits of companies like Monsanto and BP.”[5] 

The soy that is being certified by the RTRS is mostly Monsanto’s RoundupReady GM soy, made resistant to Monsanto’s own herbicide Roundup based on glyphosate, which has been increasingly linked to serious health impacts on humans and wildlife.[6] Mixtures of pesticides are sprayed over large surfaces by airplane or large machines, causing severe health problems for the local population, pollution of water and damage to crops.

Hugo Byrnes on behalf of Ahold wrote in response to the petition that there are at present too few alternatives to soy imports. However, retailers like Ahold drive the use of soy by promoting cheap meat products. Instead, soy animal feed should be replaced by locally grown animal feed, and factory farming should be banned.

He also claimed that Ahold “does not intend to communicate the use of certified soy to consumers via packaging”, which shows once more that certified “responsible” soy has already failed as a brand.

Meike Vierstra (ASEED Europe) says: “Supermarkets that participate in this greenwash are making a big mistake. Consumers will understand that this label is misleading. We say to these companies: Don’t sell the lie.” 

For more information:

Eve Mitchell, Food & Water Europe

Phone: +44 (0)1381 610 740 email: [email protected]

Tjerk Dalhuisen, Toxicsoy.org,

Mobile: +31 6 14699126, email: [email protected]

Nina Holland, Corporate Europe Observatory

Mobile: +31-6 30285042, email: [email protected]

Meike Vierstra, ASEED Europe, Mobile: +31-6-5248 1471, e-mail: [email protected]

Notes to the editor:

[1] Petition text: http://www.toxicsoy.org/toxicsoy/Action/action.html.
Support letter: http://www.toxicsoy.org/toxicsoy/news/Artikelen/2011/3/8_Letter_to_supermarkets__responsible_soy_is_misleading_consumers_files/Please%20reject%20RTRS-certified%20soy%20letter-1.pdf

[2]More critical analysis on the RTRS criteria: Certified Responsible? GM Watch, CEO and Friends of the Earth, March 2011. http://www.gmwatch.eu/images/pdf/rtrsbackgrounderfinal.pdf

[3] Open Letter: Growing Opposition to Round Table on Responsible Soy. June 2010.

[4] Letter from Belgian NGOs: http://www.gifsoja.nl/Gifsoja/nieuws/Artikelen/2011/2/4_Artikel_1_files/11%2002%2004%20%20brief%20NL%20organisaties%20RTRS.pdf 

[5] Letter Deutsche Naturschutzring to WWF:

[6] Antoniou, M., Brack, P., Carrasco, A., Fagan, J., Habib, M., Kageyama, P., Leifert, C., Nodari, R., Pengue, W. 2010. GM Soy: Sustainable? Responsible? http://www.gmwatch.org/files/GMsoy_SustainableResponsible_Sept2010_Summary.pdf

Food & Water Europe is a program of Food & Water Watch, Inc., a non-profit consumer NGO based in Washington, D.C., working to ensure clean water and safe food in Europe and around the world. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

The Perils of the Global Soy Trade: Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts

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Food

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Globalization has fundamentally changed agriculture across Europe. The idyllic image of small farms with sustainable agriculture has been replaced with agricultural cogs producing food-ingredient inputs for international industrial agri-businesses. The pork chops and chickens on European tables begin their lives far away on soybean plantations in Latin America, where the feed for European livestock is harvested.

The international tentacles of the food chain tie deforestation in Brazil and Argentina to factory-farmed livestock in Europe. International trade agreements like the World Trade Organization facilitated the global corporate agri-business network that delivers soybeans and maize from Latin America to giant pig and chicken holdings in Europe and finally to a handful of supermarket chains.The beneficiaries of deregulated trade in agricultural goods have been the international grain traders, the investors in Latin American plantations, and the largest meatpacking and supermarket chains.

This paper connects the dots between the global agricultural commodity trade and the real-life impacts on consumers, rural communities in Europe and Latin America, and the environment. Findings include:

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  • Powerful soy interests drive small farmers off the land. Soybean plantations in Argentina and Brazil average about 1,000 hectares, but can be between 10,000 and 50,000 hectares. These large farms concentrate the land in the hands of a cadre of powerful investors and landowners, hurting indigenous farmers. There have even been reported cases of exploitation and enslavement of soy workers in Brazil.
  • Industrial soy plantations feed European livestock genetically modified (GM) feed. In 2009, Brazil and Argentina were the second- and third-largest cultivators of GM crops (herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant engineered seeds), growing 42.7 million hectares of GM soybeans, maize and cotton combined.
  • Soybean imports supersized European pig and chicken farms. Low-priced soybean meal has helped reduce the number of European pig and chicken farmers and expand the scale of the remaining farms to gargantuan proportions. In 2007, 74 million pigs were fattened on the largest 1 percent of holdings — half of all pigs in the EU.

None of this is inevitable. Just as we created these changes, we can fix the problems with a few straightforward steps. Agriculture should be removed from the binding strictures of international trade agreements; nations should pursue farm policies that promote sustainable production, food sovereignty and food security for their populations; and food should be labeled to show the full life cycle of its production, including GM feed labeling for meat and dairy products. These are concrete steps we can take immediately to address the problems raised by the international soy and feed industrial complex and move toward improved food sovereignty in the EU and in countries that supply our food.

EU Version: No Jobs Here: Why Industrial Fish Farming’s Promise to Boost Local Economies Falls Flat

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FoodCommon Resources

TraditionalFishing.jpgThe open water aquaculture and salmon industries tout fish farms as an opportunity to create jobs. Given current economic struggles worldwide, any potential for a new industry to increase job opportunities is hard to dismiss. Viable, gainful employment is badly needed. Unfortunately, Food & Water Watch found that the jobs created by fish farms are unstable, in some cases undesirable, and are very few in number related to the number of fish produced. In fact, the trend in the industry has been to cut jobs to increase “efficiency,” and to abandon communities if better sites arise elsewhere. Moreover open water fish farms can threaten previously-existing jobs in tourism, recreational fishing and commercial fishing.

 

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Unseen Hazards: from Nanotechnology to Nanotoxicity

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Food

nanotech-reportUnfortunately, the enormous potential of nanotechnology to quell the world’s problems may be offset by its potential to cause harm. There is legitimate concern that the nano-sized particles employed in this new technology will have seriously damaging effects on the health of humans and the environment. Dozens of studies from the emerging field of nanotoxicity have already demonstrated hazards associated with nanoparticles.

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Unseen Hazards: from Nanotechnology to Nanotoxicity

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Food

nanotech-reportUnfortunately, the enormous potential of nanotechnology to quell the world’s problems may be offset by its potential to cause harm. There is legitimate concern that the nano-sized particles employed in this new technology will have seriously damaging effects on the health of humans and the environment. Dozens of studies from the emerging field of nanotoxicity have already demonstrated hazards associated with nanoparticles.

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Biotech Diplomacy

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Food

Injecting the Corn to Create GMOsWhen you think of an embassy, you might think of diplomats dining with world leaders and consulate staffers assisting travelers who have lost their passports. Lately, however, ambassadors representing the United States have been carrying out a less traditional sort of mission in the European Union: promoting the interests of biotechnology companies and the genetically modified products they are attempting to sell around the world.

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