GM material in animal feed

There have been some concerns that functional transgenes from GM-derived feed materials might be incorporated into livestock products for human consumption (milk, meat and eggs). Biologically active genes and proteins are common constituents of food and feed, but digestion in both animals and humans is known to rapidly degrade their DNA, and the subsequent uptake of DNA fragments from the intestinal tract into the body is a normal physiological process.

In a statement published on 20 July 2007, EFSA advised that 'a large number of experimental studies with livestock have shown that recombinant DNA fragments or proteins derived from GM plants have not been detected in tissues, fluids or edible products of farm animals such as broilers, cattle, pigs or quails'.

When reviewing the issue later the same year, EFSA noted that 'the recombinant sequence is present in the GM plant only as a single or low copy number, which makes the potential absorption a rare event and therefore difficult to detect', and that 'when more studies are carried out with more sensitive detection methods, such recombinant DNA fragments may be more frequently found in the future'. It is therefore possible that DNA fragments derived from GM plant materials may occasionally be detected in animal tissues, in the same way that DNA fragments derived from non-GM plant materials can be detected in these same tissues. EFSA also noted that 'no technique is currently available to enable a valid and reliable tracing of animal products (meat, milk, eggs) when the producer animals have been fed a diet incorporating GM plants'.

Before the GM Food and Feed Regulation came into force, ten plant lines with potential use in animal feed had been licensed for commercialisation in the EU under EC Directive 2001/18 on the deliberate release into the environment of GMOs (the Deliberate Release Directive). Five of these authorisations were revoked in March 2007 following their owners' decision to withdraw the products from the market. Another fifteen plant lines have since been authorised by the Commission under the GM Food and Feed Regulation.

There are therefore twenty-three GMOs that have been authorised under the Regulation for possible use in feed in the EU. This list includes seventeen varieties of maize, two varieties of soya bean, and one variety each of oilseed rape, sugar beet, cotton and potato. These varieties have been produced to have resistance to certain herbicides or insect pests or, in some cases, both, except for the potato which has an enhanced starch content. Further details of these varieties are given in the register on the Commission's website, available through the link at the bottom of this page.

All of these GM varieties have been authorised for import and processing. Only three of them – the starch potato and two of the maize varieties – have been licensed for cultivation, although one of the maizes cannot be grown in the EU because it has still to be included in the Common Catalogue of approved seed varieties. Small quantities of the other maize are currently grown commercially in the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain, but the seed is not marketed in the UK. The potato is currently grown in the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden, but will not be grown in the UK because it does not have the required starch processing facilities.

When the GM Food and Feed Regulation came into force, there were several products on the European market derived from plant lines that had not been authorised under the Deliberate Release Directive because there had been no intention to commercialise the plants themselves in the EU. All were granted temporary authorisation under the GM Food and Feed Regulation pending their evaluation by EFSA and decisions on their continued use. Five of them have since been authorised under the Regulation, and are included in the list given earlier. Temporary authorisation therefore continues for five varieties of cotton, five varieties of maize, two varieties of oilseed rape, one variety of soya bean and two microorganisms (one variety of yeast and a bacterial strain). This means that there is a total of 38 GMOs that have been authorised or are having the authorisations renewed.

A larger number of GM plant lines, including varieties of maize, soya, oilseed rape, cotton and rice that have not received marketing consents in the EU, have been approved for growing elsewhere in the world, particularly major commodity-exporting countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, India and the USA. In general, the EU's authorisation procedures for new GM varieties tend to be slower than those of other countries, a time-lag known as 'asynchronous authorisation'.

Before 18 April 2004, GM material for feed use was not required to be labelled. Since then, labelling has been required for feed materials and compound feeds that contain GM or GM-derived material. Labelling is not required for feed consignments containing adventitious or technically unavoidable traces of GM, up to a threshold of 0.9% for GM varieties approved in the EU. Until April 2007, there was a second threshold of 0.5% for varieties that had received a favourable scientific assessment but had yet to be authorised in the EU, but this was a temporary measure that expired in April 2007. According to the European Feed Manufacturers' Association (FEFAC), at least 85% (about 107 million tonnes) of the EU's compound feed production is now labelled to indicate that it contains GM or GM-derived material.

The spread of biotechnology through commodity-exporting countries means that supplies of feed materials to the EU will contain a growing proportion of GM-derived products. It is not possible to quantify this as there is no legal requirement to collect such data, but these imports are considered by the EU feed industry as unavoidable because the EU is not self-sufficient in protein-rich feed. The European Feed Manufacturers' Association estimates that the EU feed industry imports annually over 70% of its soya and rapeseed requirements. A total of 98% of the soya bean meal imported by the EU is sourced from Brazil and Argentina, which are major producers of GM soya. Brazil and Argentina also supply the EU with significant quantities of maize for starch manufacture, the by-products of which go for feed use; much of this will be GM. The UK imports cotton meal from Brazil, India and China, which are major producers of GM cotton.

Identity preservation – i.e., the segregation of GM and non-GM crops after harvest and during transport, storage and subsequent use – is not routinely practised by commodity-exporting countries, but can be achieved at a premium. This additional price will vary according to the state of the commodity markets and the nature of demand for the end products (milk, meat and eggs for human consumption).

The total global area sown with GM crops in 2010 was estimated as 148 million hectares in 29 countries (up from 134 million hectares in 25 countries in 2009, 125 million hectares in 2008 and 114.3 million hectares in 23 countries in 2007). This was the fifteenth consecutive year of increase in the area devoted to GM crops, with much of the increase being in developing countries. These were responsible for 48% of the world's GM crop production. It is further estimated that 90% of the 15.4 million farmers who grow GM crops are located in developing countries such as China, India, the Philippines and South Africa, and that most of these farmers are producing on a smaller scale than their industrial-scale equivalents in the Americas.

The USA is the largest producer of GM commodity crops. In 2010, it grew 66.8 million hectares, followed by Brazil in second place with 25.4 million hectares and Argentina in third place with 22.9 million hectares. The other top ten GM commodity crop producing countries, each with more than 1 million hectares in production, were (in order) India, Canada, China, Paraguay, Pakistan, South Africa and Uruguay. The leading GM crop in the Americas is soya bean, which by volume accounts for more than half of all the GM crops grown worldwide. GM maize is the second most common crop, accounting for a third of global GM production, again mostly from the Americas. Canada is the leading producer of GM oilseed rape. Brazil, India and China account for the bulk of GM cotton production.

Although numerical estimates for 2010 are not available, estimates for previous years have indicated that GM varieties now constitute a high proportion of crops grown in countries that are net exporters to the world market. For example, in 2009 it was reported that in the USA GM accounted for 85% of maize plantings, 88% of cotton plantings, 91% of soya bean plantings and 95% of sugar beet plantings. In Argentina, in the same year, GM varieties accounted for almost all of the soya plantings and 65% of maize plantings; in Canada, GM varieties formed 93% of the oilseed rape crop; and GM cotton accounted for 40% of Brazil's cotton production, 87% of Indian cotton output and 68% of Chinese cotton.

GM crops now occupy more than 10% of the world’s arable land, an area more than five times the size of the UK. The table below shows (in hectares) the quantities of GM soya, maize, cotton and oilseed rape grown worldwide in 2010 as a proportion of the total harvests (i.e. GM plus conventional) of each crop.

Global cultivation	Total	GM varieties
Soya bean	95 million	73.3 million (77%)
Maize	157 million	46.8 million (30%)
Cotton	34 million	21 million (62%)
Oilseed rape	30 million	7 million (23%)
Total for the above four crops	316 million	148.1 million (47%)

Sources: European Commission; Food Standards Agency; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; European Feed Manufacturers' Association; International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications; US Department of Agriculture.