The GMO controversy continues: which parts of the feed industry involve GMOs?

As for the letters GMO, many people probably still do not know what they mean, but if these letters are translated into Chinese, there is probably no one who has not heard of them. To be precise, GMO is the English acronym for "genetically modified organism." The reason everyone knows the term genetically modified is that, after all, as food it has already touched everyone's needs. In recent years, the topic of GMOs has also sparked widespread controversy.

Domestically, the relevant situation regarding GMOs, as well as the scope of domestic GMO research and commercialization, has been introduced many times. To sum up, the crops commercially grown domestically include cotton and papaya, while imported GM crops mainly include corn and soybeans. Therefore, the only products that can be involved in GM feed use are those related to corn and soybeans.

Everyone should be familiar with soybeans, and China's imports in recent years can be said to have increased year by year. In 2017, imports reached 95.53 million tons, while domestic soybeans were only more than 13 million tons, showing strong domestic demand for soybeans. Domestic soybeans are already far from able to meet the domestic market.

What should be said here is that, in terms of the nature of imported soybeans, non-GM soybeans are almost nonexistent, because the proportion of imported non-GM soybeans is very low. Among the major importing countries, whether the United States, Brazil or Argentina, all have fully popularized GM soybeans. China also has clear explanations for the uses of GM soybeans: oil pressing and soybean meal. The reason China imports large quantities of soybeans is also that the demand for feed use in China is simply too great. As the living standards of the Chinese people improve, the demand for meat products is also increasing. Therefore, most imported soybeans are used to press soybean meal. And soybean meal is also probably the one most linked to GMOs in feed use.

In addition, there is corn. Although China has not approved commercial cultivation of corn, this does not prevent the import of GM corn from abroad. Although the import volume of corn is not large, in 2017 the import volume was more than 3.6 million tons, which can be said to be a drop in the bucket relative to China's total corn output. However, imported corn is mostly used for industrial purposes, but it can be seen in the feed industry within the breeding industry.

In summary, domestically, the GMOs that can basically be linked to feed are the above corn and soybeans. I hope this is helpful to you.