Poultry and red meat processor Grampian Country Food Group is responding to consumer and retailer worries about GM food by banning GM soya from its production systems.
The move by Grampian, biggest independent food company in the UK, will intensify industry debate as to the practicality and cost of removing GM ingredients from the national food chain.
This initiative comes against a background of cost pressure in the main livestock sectors, due partly to the recent decision by EU agriculture ministers to ban meat and bone meal from animal feed as a safeguard against BSE.
World prices for all soya, not only non-GM supplies, and for other livestock feed protein ingredients, have been volatile in recent months as markets have tried to anticipate the demand changes prompted by new food safety fears.
Grampian's move is seen in the industry as a crucial test of price parameters in the meat market. The company is vertically integrated as well as having a large share of total UK sales, especially in the poultry and pigmeat sectors.
Its weekly output including 3.8 million chickens and nearly 25,000 pigs (along with significant quantities of beef and lamb for the supermarket trade) is supported partly by in-house production of feed.
Its five mills turn out nearly 20,000 tonnes of compound feed for poultry and pigs each week, making Grampian a major force in the national raw material market and a significant user of imports.
Its commitment is to make all its poultry and pig feed only from non GM soya by June in the light of requests by several retail customers.
Last year Grampian caused unease in the pig market by becoming the first major UK supplier of pork to take antibiotic growth promoters out of its production systems.
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