Should we worry about soya in our food?

Whether you know it or not, you'll probably be eating soya today. It's in 60% of all processed food, from cheese to ice cream, baby formula to biscuits. But should it carry a health warning? Felicity Lawrence investigates

Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian


Harvested, unprocessed soya beans
 

Over the next months, Fitzpatrick carried out an exhaustive study of soya and its effects. "We discovered quite quickly," he recalls, "that soya contains toxins and plant oestrogens powerful enough to disrupt women's menstrual cycles in experiments. It also appeared damaging to the thyroid." James's lobbying eventually forced governments to investigate. In 2002, the British government's expert committee on the toxicity of food (CoT) published the results of its inquiry into the safety of plant oestrogens, mainly from soya proteins, in modern food. It concluded that in general the health benefits claimed for soya were not supported by clear evidence and judged that there could be risks from high levels of consumption for certain age groups. Yet little has happened to curb soya's growth since.

More than 60% of all processed food in Britain today contains soya in some form, according to food industry estimates. It is in breakfast cereals, cereal bars and biscuits, cheeses, cakes, dairy desserts, gravies, noodles, pastries, soups, sausage casings, sauces and sandwich spreads. Soya, crushed, separated and refined into its different parts, can appear on food labels as soya flour, hydrolysed vegetable protein, soy protein isolate, protein concentrate, textured vegetable protein, vegetable oil (simple, fully, or partially hydrogenated), plant sterols, or the emulsifier lecithin. Its many guises hint at its value to manufacturers.

Soya increases the protein content of processed meat products. It replaces them altogether in vegetarian foods. It stops industrial breads shrinking. It makes cakes hold on to their water. It helps manufacturers mix water into oil. Hydrogenated, its oil is used to deep-fry fast food.

Soya is also in cat food and dog food. But above all it is used in agricultural feeds for intensive chicken, beef, dairy, pig and fish farming. Soya protein - which accounts for 35% of the raw bean - is what has made the global factory farming of livestock for cheap meat a possibility. Soya oil - high in omega 6 fatty acids and 18% of the whole bean - has meanwhile driven the postwar explosion in snack foods around the world. Crisps, confectionery, deep-fried take-aways, ready meals, ice-creams, mayonnaise and margarines all make liberal use of it. Its widespread presence is one of the reasons our balance of omega 3 to omega 6 essential fatty acids is so out of kilter.

You may think that when you order a skinny soya latte, you are choosing a commodity blessed with an unadulterated aura of health. But soya today is in fact associated with patterns of food consumption that have been linked to diet-related diseases. And 50 years ago it was not eaten in the west in any quantity.

In 1965, the earliest year for which the Chicago Board of Trade keeps figures, global soya bean production was just 30m tonnes. By 2005, the world was consuming nine times that a year, at 270m tonnes. World soya oil production, meanwhile, has increased sevenfold over the same period, from 5m tonnes to 34m tonnes a year.

To feed demand, new agricultural frontiers are being opened up in Brazil, where large areas of virgin rainforest have been illegally felled to make room for the crop. US-based transnationals are now exporting soya back to China, the country from which it originated, as newly urbanised Chinese switch to industrialised western diets. Thanks to US agribusiness, we have developed an apparently insatiable global appetite for the bean produced by farmers in the Americas.

James and Fitzpatrick became convinced early on that this entirely new dependence on soya was, in fact, a dangerous experiment. The dead parrots were no joke - they were the canaries in the coalmine.

For James and his wife Valerie, breeding the exotic birds down under was a retirement dream. They wanted to feed their young birds the best, so they began giving the chicks a soya feed. Parrots do not eat soya beans in the wild but the high-protein animal feed had been marketed in the US as a new miracle food.

The result was a catastrophic breeding year. Some of the birds were infertile; many died. Other young male birds aged prematurely or reached puberty years early. "We realised there was some sort of hormonal disruption going on but we'd eliminated other possible hormone disrupting chemicals such as pesticides from the inquiry," Fitzpatrick says.

So the toxicologist began a systematic review of the scientific literature on soya. After finding out about the plant oestrogens in soya, Fitzpatrick says, "My next thought was: what about children who are fed soya milk?" He calculated that babies fed exclusively on soya formula could receive the oestrogenic equivalent, based on body weight, of five birth control pills a day.

In fact, it had been known since the early 1980s that plant oestrogens, or phyto-oestrogens, could produce biological effects in humans. The most common of these were a group of compounds in soya protein called isoflavones. Food manufacturers had variously marketed soya foods as an antidote to menopausal hot flushes and osteoporosis, and as a protective ingredient against cardiovascular disease and hormone-related cancers. Large quantities of mainly industry-sponsored scientific research have been produced to back up these claims. The American soya industry spends about $80m every year, raised from a mandatory levy on producers, to research and promote the consumption of soya around the world. The rash of new soya foods can be seen as the latest in a line of innovative ways devised to use soya.

The hypothesis behind the health claims is that rates of heart disease and certain cancers such as breast and prostate cancer are lower in east Asian populations with soya-rich diets than in western countries, and that the oestrogens in soya might therefore have a protective effect.

Fitzpatrick, however, looked into historic soya consumption in Japan and China and concluded that Asians did not actually eat that much. What they did eat tended to have been fermented for months. "If you look at people who are into health fads here, they are eating soya steaks and veggie burgers or veggie sausages and drinking soya milk - they are getting over 100g a day. They are eating tonnes of the raw stuff."

Mass exposure to isoflavones in the west has only occurred in the past 30 years due to the widespread incorporation of soya protein into processed foods, a fact noted by the Royal Society in its expert report on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in 2000. When the independent experts on the scientific committee on toxicity trawled through all the scientific data, they concluded that soya milk should not be recommended for infants even when they had cow's milk allergies, except on medical advice, because of the high levels of oestrogenic isoflavones it contains.

On breast cancer, they decided that "despite the suggested benefits of phyto-oestrogens in lowering risk of developing breast cancer, there is also evidence that they may stimulate the progression of the disease". The lower risk of certain cancers among Asian populations might be due to other factors - their high consumption of fish, for example. They advised caution. On the effects on menopause symptoms, the evidence was inconclusive, the experts ruled. On bone density, the committee thought there might be some protective effects, but the data was unclear. The evidence on prostate cancer was mixed. Since isoflavones cross the placenta, the implications of pregnant women eating large quantities of soya were unclear. There was some evidence that soya-based products had a beneficial effect on the good HDL cholesterol but they were not sure that was down to the isoflavones. On the other hand - reassuringly - they judged that a study linking soya consumption to decline in cognitive function was not convincing.

What the committee also pointed out was that the way soya was processed affected the levels of phyto-oestrogens. Traditional fermentation reduces the levels of isoflavones two- to threefold. Modern factory processes do not. Moreover, modern American strains of soya have significantly higher levels of isoflavones than Japanese or Chinese ones because they have been bred to be more resistant to pests. (One way to tackle pests is to stop them breeding by making them infertile. It turns out that unfermented soya did play one role in traditional Asian diets - it was eaten by monks to dampen down their libido.)

Sue Dibb, now food policy expert at the National Consumer Council, was a member of the CoT working group that compiled the final report. She questions whether infant soya milk should still be on public sale and is troubled by the latest marketing of soya. "We looked in detail at the claimed health benefits for adults for soya consumption and concluded there was not sufficient evidence to support many of them. There may be benefits but there are also risks. The groups of adults of particular concern are those with a thyroid problem and women with oestrogen-dependent breast cancer. It worries me that soya is being pushed as a health food by a big soya and supplements industry. We ought to be taking a more cautious approach."

The Food Standards Agency advice is that soya's potential to have an adverse effect on babies' hormonal development is still controversial, but that soya formula should only be given to infants under 12 months old in exceptional circumstances.

Professor Richard Sharpe, head of the Medical Research Council's human reproductive sciences unit at Edinburgh University, was also a member of the committee's working group on phyto-oestrogens in food. He has been studying the decline in male fertility in the past half-century. He recently completed studies on the effects of soya milk on young male monkeys which showed that it interferes with testosterone levels. "In the first three months after birth, baby boys have a neonatal testosterone rise. The testes are very, very active in hormone production at this point and there is a lot of cell activity going on that will determine sperm count in adults and will affect the developing prostate. If you introduce a phyto-oestrogen, which can, in large amounts, alter these changes, you may predispose children to later disease. Soya formula milk is a [recent] western invention. There is not the historical evidence to show it is safe."

Manufacturers, however, argue that soya infant formula has been widely used without problems. "The industry has said that if the CoT comes up with clear science, we will take note, but the case is not proven," says Roger Clarke, director general of the industry's Infant Dietetics Food Association. "A lot of the work it looked at was based on experimental work with animals. There does not seem to be clear evidence of adverse effects, and there is demand for it. There are some markets, such as vegan usage, where soya is the only alternative."

While 30-40% of all infants in the US are raised on soya formula - not least because it is given away in welfare programmes - soya milk for babies has always been confined to a small minority in the UK. So does Sharpe think exposure to soya from other sources - vegetarian soya proteins, the soya flour in factory bread, the hydrolysed proteins added as flavourings, for example - has a cumulative effect that might be worrying to other age groups? He says he is not concerned about people who eat soya foods in moderation or in the way they are traditionally used in oriental diets, but when it comes to modern processed foods, which use soya proteins in different ways, he prefers to turn the question round. "If someone said they were adding a hormone to your foods, would you be happy with that? There may be lots of effects, some of them may be beneficial, but would you be happy with that? I am not a fan of processed foods, full stop. And these quick fixes for protecting against ill-health - you know they can't be true," he adds.

A steaming hiss fills the kitchen of the top London restaurant Nobu, even after the lunchtime rush. Japanese chefs are filleting the evening's fish while stock bubbles and concentrates in its stainless steel vat behind. Executive chef Mark Edwards hands me a teaspoon of one of his soy sauces. Cool from the fridge, it is thick, rich, dark and sweet, yet remarkably clear from its long fermentation. The miso that he uses to marinade his famous black cod for three days is dense and strong from its lengthy brew too. Muslin cloths envelop delicate curds of tofu, made fresh each day and added in small cubes to miso soup.

Soya is used in traditional oriental diets in these forms, after cultures, moulds or precipitants have achieved a biochemical transformation, because in its raw form the mature bean is known not only for its oestrogenic qualities but for also its antinutrients, according to the clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story. Soya was originally grown in China as a green manure, for its ability to fix nitrogen in the soil, rather than as a food crop, until the Chinese discovered ways of fermenting it, she says.

The young green beans, now sold as a fashionable snack, edamame, are lower in oestrogens and antinutrients, though not free of them. But raw mature soya beans contain phytates that prevent mineral absorption and enzyme inhibitors that block the key enzymes we need to digest protein. They are also famous for inducing flatulence.

Christopher Dawson, who owns the Clearspring brand of organic soy sauces, agrees. He lived in Japan for 18 years and his Japanese wife, Setsuko, is a cookery teacher. "I never saw soy beans on the table in Japan - they're indigestible."

Dawson describes the traditional craft method of transforming the soya bean through fermentation, so that its valuable amino acids become available but its antinutrients are tamed. The process involves cooking whole soya beans, complete with their oil, for several hours, then adding the spores of a mould to the mix, and leaving it to ferment for three days to begin the long process of breaking down the proteins and starches. This initial brew is then mixed with salt water and left to ferment for a further 18 months, during which time the temperature will vary with the seasons. The end result is an intensely flavoured condiment in which the soya's chemical composition has been radically altered. Traditional miso is similarly made with natural whole ingredients, slowly aged.

Most soya sauces (and misos) are not made this way any more, however. Instead of using the whole bean, manufacturers short-cut the fermentation by starting with defatted soy protein meal. Soya veggie burgers and sausages generally use the same chemically extracted fraction of the bean.

This meal is the product of the industrial crushing process the vast majority of the world's soya beans go through. The raw beans are broken down to thin flakes, which are then percolated with a petroleum-based hexane solvent to extract the soya oil. The remains of the flakes are toasted and ground to a protein meal, most of which goes into animal feed. Soya flour is made in a similar way.

The oil then goes through a process of cleaning, bleaching, degumming and deodorising to remove the solvent and the oil's characteristic "off" smells and flavours. The lecithin that forms a heavy sludge in the oil during storage used to be regarded as a waste product, but now it has been turned into a valuable market in its own right as an emulsifier.

In so-called "naturally brewed" soya sauces the processed soy protein meal is mixed with the mould spores and given accelerated ageing at high temperatures for three to six months. Non-brewed soya sauce, the cheapest grade, is made in just two days. Defatted soya flour is mixed with hydrochloric acid at high temperatures and under pressure to create hydrolysed vegetable protein. Salt, caramel and chemical preservatives and flavourings are then added to provide colour and taste. This rapid hydrolysis method uses the enzyme glutamase as a reactor and creates large amounts of the unnatural form of glutamate that is found in MSG.

Most commercial soya milk today is made from soya isolates, although some of the pioneers of soya foods as health products in Europe avoid the chemical extraction process and use whole beans to make their milk. The key selling points for both types of soya milk are that they contain complete proteins and oestrogenic isoflavones.

Bernard Deryckere, president of the European Natural Soyfood Manufacturers Association, says that his members' products, made using natural processes, are a healthy alternative to diary products. "A lot of people in Europe are lactose-intolerant. Soya milk was invented in China 4,000 years ago and today it's consumed by all types of people as a cholesterol-free source of quality protein."

Daniel's detailed examination of the history of soya milk, however, suggests that soya milk was made not to drink, except in times of famine, but as the first step in the process of making tofu. After the long, slow boiling of soya beans in water to eliminate toxins, a curdling agent was added to the liquid to separate it. The curds would then be pressed to make tofu and the whey, in which the antinutrients were concentrated, would be thrown away.

Dibb points out that if you are drinking non-dairy milk because you want calcium without cow's milk, there are plenty of other sources such as green leafy vegetables and nuts. And only those eating extremely limited diets are likely to be short of protein as adults.

Dawson, a lifelong vegetarian, does not drink soya milk and only eats tofu in moderation. "I will only use a product for my family if there is 200 years of tradition behind it. You are asking for trouble if you take an isolate from soya - yet so much effort seems to go into taking industry's waste and turning it into new food."

The effort that has gone into creating the global soya market has indeed been enormous. Today it is dominated by a handful of American trading companies. Three of them - Bunge, ADM and Cargill - control 80% of the European soya bean crushing industry. These three, together with allied companies, are also estimated to control up to 80% of European animal feed manufacturing. They dominate the US soya market, and also account for 60% of Brazil's soya exports.

Before the first world war, only a very few soya beans were crushed. The Americans had begun experimenting with using the protein meal as animal feed, but farmers were reluctant to take it up because it was indigestible to chicken and pigs. The oil produced was considered "a bit of an embarrassment", according to Kurt Burger, a fats and oils technical expert at the Society of Chemical Industry, whose experience in the food industry goes back to 1944. It was mainly used in soaps because it was considered unpalatable. (Henry Ford later funded research projects to turn soya into plastic for car parts.)

Cottonseed oil, a byproduct of the cotton industry, was the main edible oil used in the US. But then the combination of disease in monocropped cotton and demand from European allies in the first world war for oil both to eat and to make the glycerine needed for nitroglycerine in explosives, stimulated American soy oil production.

It was not until the 1940s that industry worked out how to deactivate the enzyme inhibitor in the protein meal sufficiently for animals to tolerate it, and it was only technology taken from the Nazis at the end of the second world war that solved the problem of the oil's horrible smell and flavour. That left the way for the US to promote the soya that suited its agricultural conditions as part of the reconstruction of Europe through the 1950s. Soya oil exports to Europe tripled under the Marshall Plan, and heavily subsidised exports of surplus US soya ensured the commodity's dominance in animal feed. The subsidies continue. Between 1998 and 2004, US Department of Agriculture figures show that its soya farming received $13bn in subsidies from the American taxpayer.

Until 2003, the US was the largest exporter of soya. But through the 1990s, multinationals promoted the expansion of the crop in Latin America, helping finance farmers and building the infrastructure for soya exports. The attraction of Latin America is that land is cheap and labour costs are minimal too. Three years ago, the combined exports from Brazil and Argentina surpassed US exports for the first time. The cost is now being counted there in environmental damage and social upheaval. The cost to western consumers may yet be counted in health.

The SOUTH-EAST ASIAN Market for NON-DAIRY DRINKS
 

Country Coverage: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines
Pricing Scheme:	Published: June 2004
Full Report  USD 2,950  (GB £1,595)	Pages: 175

Country Chapters  USD 740 (GB £399)

Soya Milk Driving Growth in Non-Dairy Drinks Market
The South-East Asian market for non-dairy drinks is reporting healthy growth with most growth occurring in the soya milk segment. Market growth is being driven by the marketing efforts of manufacturers and the growing popularity of soya milk as a dairy milk alternative.

Asian consumers are very familiar with soya drinks, which have been marketed as non-carbonated soft drinks for decades. Scientific evidence linking soya consumption to health benefits like low cholesterol and reduced incidence of osteoporosis is widening consumer appeal for soya milk. This is causing soya milk to become increasingly popular as a dairy milk substitute, especially from consumers seeking healthy & nutritious beverages.

Some of the largest Asian producers of soya drinks are based in South-East Asia with a few firms producing soya drinks for over half a century. Keen competition is leading companies to focus on marketing & promotional activities and new product development for sales growth. In recent years, new product launches have included novel flavours of soya milk as well as soya drinks with functional ingredients. Green tea and mango flavoured fresh soya milk is available in the Singaporean market as well as soya milk fortified with omega acids.

The fresh soya milk market is experiencing high growth in certain Asian countries. Fresh soya milk competes directly with dairy milk in the chilled cabinets of food retailers and Asian consumers are favouring fresh soya milk because of its low-fat content, relatively low price, and nutritional content.

The modernisation of the retail trade in Asian countries has led to a large rise in the number of supermarkets & hypermarkets, which are becoming the most important sales channels for non-dairy drinks. Larger supermarkets in the major cities have a comprehensive range of non-dairy drinks, with some offering soya bean drinks, organic soya milk, rice drinks and oat drinks. Health food shops are the most important sales outlets for organic beverages, especially rice drinks and oat drinks in most countries.

This report analyses the non-dairy drinks market in the five leading country markets in South-East Asia. Market & competitive information is given for soya drinks, rice drinks and oat drinks, which includes market size (volume & revenues), market growth forecasts (2004-2010), market & pricing trends, sales channels and market shares of the leading producers. Strategic recommendations are given to existing producers and prospective new entrants.

More Information
Research News: South-East Asia: From Functional Soya Drinks to Organic?
                      Singapore: Hain Builds Platform for Asia Expansion

Soya Republic As the people of Argentina are driven by economic collapse to the point of starvation, a new solution is being imposed upon them. Ben Backwell reports on a country being force fed genetically modified soya designed not for humans, but for cattle.
Date:01/02/2003		Author:Ben Backwell
‘There is no justification for hunger in a country with one of the greatest levels of food production per inhabitant,’ says the text on the slick website of the Soya Solidarity campaign. Underneath, a few shiny clean soya beans in front of the smiling face of a child. ‘Its time that we replace attitudes based in egoism, bureaucracy, corruption, indifference and “don’t interfere” with those of solidarity, ethics, action, and fundamentally, dignity,’ gushes the statement.   It goes on in a similar tone to describe soya, ‘Argentina’s principle crop’, as ‘a high quality food for human consumption, given that it contains proteins of a high biological value, rich in all the essential amino acids that can practically replace meat in our diet. For cultural reasons, the custom of consuming soya has not been developed. Now the moment to do so has arrived. This can be part of the solution for the hunger that many Argentines are suffering.   The statement concludes with an appeal for producers to donate soya for needy families, with the help of transport operators, storage centres and the media, ‘whose job is to let everyone know about this project and publicise recipes for the use of soya as food.   Friends in high places Solidarity Soya’s main sponsors are the Direct Sowing Producer’s Association (AAPRESID), which groups together large GM producers, Cargill, Chevron Texaco, the Argentine Exporters Association, the Grain Storage Association, the Vegetable Oil Chamber, the Rosario Agricultural Stock Exchange, and the powerful Sociedad Rural, which represents Argentina’s large landowners.   It is supported by powerful media interests such as Argentina’s biggest daily newspaper Clarín and the glossy magazine Gente – which called the Solidarity Soya campaign ‘a brilliant idea which could change history’. Héctor Huergo, a well known columnist for Clarín, called soya ‘a complete food, which just needs to enter into our culture.’ He went on to suggest that the government could save money on its social spending by supporting soya handouts instead of unemployment cheques. ‘Why spend 350 million pesos if we could save this through out solidarity scheme?’ asks Huergo.   The campaign has also been supported by media personalities such as the charismatic priest and founder of the Happy Children programme, Padre Julio Grassi, who is also currently on trial for child abuse and recipient of generous government handouts during the rule of the corrupt ex-President Carlos Menem.   ‘Many times I prayed to God and the Virgin because I couldn’t feed the children,’ declared Grassi in Gente magazine. ‘That’s why the soya donations from APPRESID were a blessing from God. According to Solidarity Soya’s website, the campaign has so far directly benefited hundreds of thousands of people in Greater Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Formosa, Rosario, San Juan and Patagonia – thanks to diesel fuel supplied by Chevron Texaco – through literally thousands of churches, communal soup kitchens, boy scout groups, rotary clubs, neighbourhood assemblies, local councils, and political ‘point men’. It has donated some 677,000 kilos of soya in the last year, and is now directly feeding ‘700,000’ people, and ‘indirectly’ some 300,000 more, according to one of the coordinators of the campaign, Ezequiel Schnyder.   With its extensive social assistance network the Catholic Church has been a key actor in extending Solidarity Soya. When contacted by anti-GM groups alarmed at the effect of the campaign, Catholic charity Cáritas refused requests for meetings and sent a written reply saying that ‘there is no proof that soya, because it is GM, causes health problems for its consumers.   While they may not be willing to talk about soya’s risks, they are more than happy to give it out. The Three Times Ådmirable Mother orphanage and its 800 children will soon be running a soya plant capable of producing 30,000 soya rations per day, which will be distributed throughout the soup kitchens of the city of La Plata, Buenos Aires Province. The project will be run by Father Carlos Cajade, with technical support from La Plata University. The former street children that live in the orphanage will act as workers in the plant, as well as, of course, eating from plant’s produce.   The campaign has also ‘persuaded’ large soya producers to donate one tonne out of every 1,000 they produce to schools, neighborhood soup kitchens, churches and hospitals. The campaign then employs a network of promoters that travel the country giving seminars on how to prepare and cook soya beans into steaks, pasties, juices, stews and so on.   Given the almost complete ignorance amongst Argentina’s urban population about agricultural affairs, even many Buenos Aires neighbourhood assemblies have been happy to promote soya as a ‘natural’ substitute for the traditional staples of pasta, meat and cheese, which have become prohibitively expensive for most Argentines. One of the key tactics of Solidarity Soya has been to donate crushing machines to schools to produce soya ‘milk’, now that school canteens can no longer afford to give children a glass of milk per day. The campaign is also in the process of donating a huge plant in the Buenos Aires provincial capital of La Plata in order to make soya flour for pasta and other foods. The plant – run by a local catholic priest - will feed 800 poor children as well as other sections of the surrounding population.   The result is a disaster. ‘Mothers in the provinces are giving soya “milk” to their children thinking that it can replace real milk,’ says Jorge Rulli, a grey-bearded former political activist and member of the Rural Reflexion Group, who spends much of his free time visiting neighbourhood assemblies to counter pro-soya propaganda. ‘The result is anaemia, hormonal disruption, weak bones, rotten teeth, malnutrition.’ The GM feedstock soya that is now being consumed in Argentina is also extremely high in agro chemical traces. Typical traces are 20 ppm of Glyphosate compared to just 0.2 ppm in soya grown for human consumption, according to specialist in GM soya Luis Sabini Fernández. Furthermore, the human body can only absorb limited quantities of soya as it is highly acidic. Argentine strains of soya were developed to be consumed as oils, or by animals in their unfermented state. ‘There is no way that soya can act as a staple without leading to physical deterioration,’ says Rulli.   A government-sponsored congress on nutrition earlier this year produced a document entitled Criteria for the Incorporation of Soya. It explicitly warns that ‘Soya should not be denominated as “milk” as it it in no way constitutes a substitute for the latter.’ The document also warns against presenting soya as a ‘panacea’, and that it should only be consumed in moderate quantities as part of a balanced diet. It goes on to say: ‘Because of its high concentration of fitates, it interferes with the absortion of iron and zinc, and is not a good source of calcium.’ It warns against giving soya juice to children of two years and under, pregnant women, and indigenous people because of their deficit in iron and calcium.   ‘Because of the fundamental role played by milk in the early years, its substitution by the misnamed soya “milk” is completely negative,’ says Andres Britos, from the Argentine Centre for the Study of Infant Nutricion (CESNI). ‘Lack of calcium will inhibit growth and lead to badly formed bones, while the lack of absorbable iron in soya can lead to anaemia.’ Britos warns that soya proteins are not as complete as those contained by meat, and warns that high levels of estrogen in soya may lead to premature development of the sexual organs if it is consumed in ‘exaggerated’ quantities.   Despite this, the government has turned a blind eye while the Soya Solidarity campaign does exactly that. In many areas, government bodies such as the National Farming Technology Institute (INTA) participate in the campaign, ignoring the guidelines spelt out above. The governor of Buenos Aires state, Felipe Solá, who was Agriculture Secretary when GM was introduced, is a firm supporter of the soya complex, and has even been prepared to use his own family as an example of the supposed benefits of a soya diet. The immediate effects in terms of the impact of this sudden introduction of soya in place of traditional foods have yet to be measured, as its effects are only now emerging in the crumbling hospitals of Argentina’s provinces. And quite apart from the open promotion of soya as staple food, much of the cheaper food sold in supermarkets already contains up to 50 per cent soya – to add consistency and volume – in everything from hamburgers to biscuits and pasta fillings.   According to Teubal, the imposition of the soya model is creating a kind of ‘dietary apartheid’, where the rich continue to eat the same diversity of foodstuffs as before, and the poor are given ‘second rate soya’. ‘The point is that this whole change of model is a business, he says. ‘It has nothing to do with people’s needs. Technology is not neutral, and GM will not resolve the problem of hunger, in the same way that the Green Revolution didn’t before.   For Rulli, the effects may be even worse: ‘We are addicted to Soya. We have been assigned a role in the world as a producer of soya and in many ways we are now a laboratory. We are seeing all kinds of things due to toxicity: precocious sexual development, early pregnancies, and at the same time, stunted growth. Hormonal disruption will end up making the population less aggressive, creating a new, more docile kind of citizen.   This propoganda is the latest development in the transformation of Argentina from a food producing nation to a supplier of feed for the livestock of wealthy nations. Its instrument is GM Soya. Its architects are the giant agro industrial corporations and the biotech firm Monsanto. And its supporting actors are a host of organisations, rural producers, NGOs and individuals who are disingenuously promoting soya as a miracle food that can solve the problems of Argentina’s poor. ‘People keep saying we are “the breadbasket of the world”, but they are missing the point,’ says Rulli. ‘We have become, not a “banana republic“ but a “soya republic”, a monoculture that is destroying people’s livelihoods, and preparing the way for famine.   Economy of Scale The statistics are startling. In 1994/95 5.9 million hectares were dedicated to soya. By 1999/2000 that number had risen to 7.2m. By the latest estimates, the amount of land used for soya is now as high as 12.7m ha.   The volume of soya produced has grown in the last 10 years from 10m tonnes to an estimated 30m in 2002, making Argentina the world’s second largest producer of GM soya, behind the US, and the world’s largest exporter. Soya cultivation has spread like a cancer, both in traditional grain production areas and in the frontier agricultural regions such as Tucumán, Salta, Santiago del Estero and El Chaco. The onslaught is carrying all before it, affecting even regions such as the forest of Yunga, now disappearing at a rate of 1000ha per year, to be replaced by the green uniformity of Soya.   ‘We have already lost – for ever – more than 130,000ha of forest,’ says the director of the Argentina’s Fundación Vida Silvestre (Wildlife Foundation), Javier Corcuera. ‘If we carry on like this we can expect more flooding and less natural resources for the population.   While Argentines go hungry, the lion’s share of the soya production goes to European feed lots, to sustain the ‘phantom hectares’ of cattle production that could not exist if it were not Argentina and other feedstock producers. The rest is exported as oils, to Asia.   Soya production has been expanding since the 1980s. The process accelerated, however, in 1996 with the introduction of Monsanto’s GM seed, Roundup Ready (RR). RR’s introduction occurred without any form of public debate in Argentina’s parliament and was retrospectively given legal sanction by the Ministry of Agriculture. The result – Argentina is by far the most successful country for Monsanto in terms of take up of its product, with over 95 per cent of producers using RR.   ‘The direct planting and the GM soya go hand in hand,’ explains Professor Miguel Teubal, investigator at the Rural Studies Group of the University of Buenos Aires. ‘With the introduction of GM soya and direct sowing, producers can carry out two harvests per year. They leave the leftovers and the weeds of the first season in place, and plant soya on top of it. To kill any thing still living, they put large quantities of Glyphosate on top of it.   The Glyphosate-based herbicide is called Round Up, and produced by Monsanto. The GM seed is called Roundup Ready and has been engineered for one thing only: to resist the Glyphosate. It is also produced by Monsanto, whose revenues in Argentina rose from $386m in 1998 to $584m in 2001 – nearly 10 per cent of its total earnings. Seemingly anticipating Argentina’s financial collapse and devaluation at the end of 2001, last year Monsanto opened a $136m production plant for Round Up in Zárate, Buenos Aires province.   In a worrying tendency, investigators at Conicet, the government-sponsored academic research council, say that Glyphosate use per hectare shows signs of significant increase in the mere five years or so that RR has been used, indicating that weeds are already becoming resistant to its use. The effect on biodiversity of this massive sustained use have yet to be calculated.   ‘The main “advantage” for producers is not that the GM soya improves yields, or reduces agro-chemical use, but that it reduces labour costs,’ says Teubal. Producers no longer have to plough or prepare the soil, nor use several types of fertilisers of herbicides. All a producer has to do is employ someone to regularly measure a sample of crops for weed and parasite levels and, if necessary, telephone a crop spraying service to make another flypass. Indeed, in a government survey carried out in the state of Córdoba, 71 per cent of farmers said one of the main advantages of RR was that ‘it saves time’. This has led to a kind of ‘agriculture without producers’, reduced rural employment and sent further waves of displaced people into the shanty towns surrounding Argentina’s huge cities.    Ben Backwell is an investigative journalist based in Argentina.   The economies of scale needed for the mechanised agriculture of direct sowing, and the costs of the Monsanto’s herbicide and seeds, have left smaller farmers unable to survive. The amount of small and medium farm holdings in Argentina fell by more than 30 per cent between 1992 and 1999.   Since October 2000, 450,000 jobs have been lost, leaving more than 20 per cent unemployed, and more than half the population below the poverty line. Salaries have lost 70 per cent of their value and the economy is shrinking at a rate of 14 per cent, while inflation runs at 40 per cent. In Tucumán, 64 per cent now live in extreme poverty.   Aside from the traditional large barons who have always controlled the bulk of the fertile land, large swathes of the country are now in the hands of foreign tycoons such as George Soros, rural investment funds run by agronomists and bankers, and the ‘sowing pools’. Many medium farmers merely lease their land to these pools and live from the rent.   Argentina’s production of consumer food goods, and the food security provided by rural producers supplying produce for local markets, has been devastated. Milk production has declined to the point that Argentina is importing milk from Uruguay for the first time in its history, along with other traditional products such as lentils, chick peas, and sweetcorn, and cattle herds have struggled to survive as they are forced into more marginal areas. ‘Argentina was not a classic case of an agroexport model because we exported the same foodstuffs which we ourselves ate, and this provided food security,’ says Professor Teubal. ‘The introduction of the soya culture has dramatically increased our vulnerability.   ‘We are replacing all the other crops and productive systems, which wouldn’t be a problem if it were easy to change back again, but we are wiping out entire woods, fruit plantations and dairy farms, and eliminating the diversity of our production,’ says Wálter Pengue, specialist in Genetic Plant Improvement of Buenos Aires University.    ‘The displaced rural producer finds himself in the slums on the edges of the big city, where his knowledge is despised and unused, at the mercy of clientalistic political networks, reliant on hand outs,’ says Rulli. ‘Within a few years they find themselves completely screwed up physically and psychologically, and when the crisis comes, so does the hunger.’

Nutritional values of Soya milk (per 100g)

• Water 93.3g
• Energy 33.0kcal
• Energy 138.0kJ
• Protein 2.8g
• Fat(total lipid) 2.0g
• Fatty acids, saturated 0.214g
• Fatty acids, mono-unsaturated 0.326g
• Fatty acids, poly-unsaturated 0.833g
• Carbohydrates 1.8g
• Fibre 1.3g
• Ash 0.27g
• Isoflavones 8.8mg
• Calcium, Ca 4.0mg
• Iron, Fe 0.58mg
• Magnesium, Mg 19.0mg
• Phosphorus, Mg 49.0mg
• Potassium, K 141.0mg
• Sodium, Na 12.0mg
• Zinc, Zn 0.23mg
• Copper, Cu 0.12mg
• Manganese, Mn 0.17mg
• Selenium, Se 1.3µg
• Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) 0.0mg
• Thiamin (vitamin B1) 0.161mg
• Riboflavin (vitamin B2) 0.070mg
• Niacin (vitamin B3) 0.147mg
• Panthotenic acid (vitamin B5) 0.048mg
• Vitamin B6 0.041 mg Folic acid 1.5µg
• Vitamin B12 0.0µg
• Vitamin A 3.0µg
• Vitamin E 0.010mg

[Source: USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference]