**Soybean in the European Union, Status and Perspective**

Yves Bertheau1 and John Davison2 *1Inra SPE, route de Saint Cyr, 78 026 Versailles cedex, 2Inra, route de Saint Cyr, 78 026 Versailles cedex(retired) France* 

#### **1. Introduction**

Originating from China, soybean is currently the most important agricultural commodity traded around the world, both in terms of volumes and money. This crop also shows the most important changes over the last decades by the predominance of genetically modified (GM) crops, dominated by herbicide tolerance traits, and its worldwide cultivation. Due to its important protein content and the increasing demand for proteins in relation with the intensification of livestock production, the soybean surfaces have dramatically increased in several South American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia when compared to the surfaces of soybean in the USA, and at a less extent in Canada (James, 2011). China is still the main (non-GM) soybean producer but the main exporters of (GM) soybean are the USA, Brazil and Argentina. China which was, until the 1930s, the main worldwide exporter but was dethroned in the 1950s by USA exporting soybean as basis of feedstuffs and China is now the main importer with ca 60% of US soy.

The success of GM soybean can be explained by the ease of cropping due to GM trait in countries with large fields, particularly for farmers for whom weed management and soil erosion have always been an issue.

This segmentation of market between food and feed use is still prevalent into the international trade: Asia mostly cultivates and uses non-GM soybean as a food component while other regions of the world mostly use GM and non-GM soybean as feed component (Birthal et al., 2010). However, since a few years, this trend is changing with the improvement of the living standards of Asian countries such as China, which now imports huge quantities of soybean for livestock feeding due to an increased demand for meat. Currently, the soybean daily price is at its second highest peak after the 2007/2008 peak. Altogether, the soybean daily price increased of only 83% over the 3 last decades due to the current prices' peak (IndexMundi, International Monetary Fund. April 20, 20111).

Despite the fact that several other sources of protein are available for livestock, the flexibility of soybean in feedstuff preparation, particularly for pork and poultry productions, drives the international trade. Its use in bovine production, meat or milk, can be more easily replaced by alternative protein sources, or simply be replaced by pasturage.

<sup>1</sup> http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=soybeans&months=360

Soybean in the European Union, Status and Perspective 5

In order to re-assure the European public on food safety and more particularly the question of GMOs, the European Community has developed a series of regulations (Table 1) to

Food safety assessment is the responsibility of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which cooperates with EU-MS national advisory committees and covers food additives, animal welfare, plant health, allergies, mycotoxins, biological hazards, chemical and biological contaminants. It also assesses the safety of GMOs (seed, food, feed, and derivatives). EFSA is an independent scientific body providing advice on all aspects of food safety, and a positive EFSA assessment is necessary for authorization to place food on the European market. GMO dossiers can be notified to the European Commission either under the 2001/18 directive or the (EC) regulation 1829/2003. Although not implied in its name,

Once a positive EFSA assessment has been obtained, and once validated GMO detection methods and control sample and reference materials are available (all being provided by the applicant company), the application is then sent to the EC. On the basis of the opinion of EFSA, in some instances amended on the basis of national advisory agencies and committees, the EC drafts a proposal for granting or refusing the authorization, which it submits to the Section on GM Food and Feed of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health. If this Standing Committee accepts the proposal, it is finally adopted by the EC. Otherwise, it is passed on to the Council of Ministers which has a time limit of 3 months to reach a qualified majority for, or against, the proposal. In the absence of such a decision (which is frequently the case), the EC adopts the proposal. Over the last years, all GMO approvals in the EU were accepted on that scheme basis with approvals for a

In contrast to several claims against the "lengthy and costly" approval European procedure, it should be noted that the notifiers often use dossiers of previous approvals in third countries, such as USA, with thus very few changes and thus very low costs of compliance with the EU approval procedure. Secondly, the European theoretical approval duration is *per se* not very long; however dossiers are in numerous instances incomplete. In this case the clock of approval is stopped each time details are requested from the notifiers. Due to these several stop-and-go steps in such an approval, the effective duration of European approval may be rather long. The European procedure of safety assessment of GMOs is currently under review, for instance on the statistics to be used in comparing animal cohorts, the guidelines about environmental impact assessment, or the more important use of the "substantial equivalence" concept in the comparisons between GM and conventional plants. Despite the relatively rather strict European approval procedure, several EU-MS introduced national bans on GMO, be these for import and transformation such as Austria, for baby

However, there are currently ca. 50 GMOs in the pipeline of approval or approved for import and transformation, including several stacked GMOs and a few modified flowers. For soybean, 11 transformation events or stacked genes are in the European approval process with 2 GM soybean as fully approved and the first approved one (MON GTS 40-3-2)

Due to the rather long European approval process, several reports outlined the possible shortage of soybean for the feed industry due to these "asynchronous approvals" (DG AGRI European Commission, 2007; Stein and Rodriguez-Cerezo, 2009, 2010a). The EC recently

**2.2 GMO approvals in the EU** 

renewable 10 years period.

in the renewal process.

ensure GMO safety, detection, traceability and labeling.

EFSA also provides advice on GMO environmental issues.

food in Italy or for cultivation as in France, Austria or Bulgaria.

Soybean has been first introduced in Europe during the XVIIth century as high-class food, however despite several scientific and popular reports during the XIXth century soybean was rarely cropped in Western Europe. The first massive importation of soybean in Europe started by the beginning of the XXth century for oil and meal production, declined during the 2 world wars, but with increasing imports between them. Since the 1950s, Europe dramatically increased its importations of soybean due to a new animal production scheme with highly concentrated livestock production. However, new dossiers in the pipeline of GMO approvals now consider cultivation in the EU. We thus examine in more depth this forthcoming issue in environmental surveillance.

Due to this increasing part of GM soybean in the international market and consumers' reluctance of several countries to accept these products, a new segmentation of the market appeared between GM and non-GM soybean linked to labeling of GM food, and feed in some countries, with an exemption of labeling below a threshold of fortuitous or technically unavoidable presence, ranging from 0.9% in the EU-272 and Russia to 3-5% in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Generally speaking, the labeling thresholds are representative of the countries' dependence on feed and food imports.
