Marks & Spencer has promised to become the first UK high street retailer to start removing genetically modified soya and maize ingredients from animal feed used to produce its wares.
M&S says it will start selling GM-free chicken, pork and egg products in selected stores from October onwards. It will then swiftly eliminate all other meat and dairy products from animals fed with GM soya and maize.
Much of the work to track down animal feed with GM ingredients has been done through M&S’s membership of a European consortium of seven major supermarkets which also includes Sainsbury’s, Carrefour (France), Effelunga (Italy), Migros (Switzerland), Delhaize (Belgium) and Superquinn (Ireland).
The consortium, set up in April, has been pooling the resources and technical skills of the supermarkets to develop ways of tracing and testing feedstock ingredients.
M&S has been able to make quicker progress on monitoring its products because it has fewer suppliers than the other consortium members and sells a more limited range of foods.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said it was making good progress with the help of the consortium, but that tracking down all GM-fed livestock would be ‘a long haul’.
‘As major retailers we have a powerful voice and we hope that by using our collective influence through the consortium we can make a big difference,’ he said.
Sainsbury’s had removed all GM ingredients from its own-label products by the end of August. At M&S the last 21 items with GM ingredients were removed at the beginning of September. All M&S food is own brand, so its entire range is now GM free.