Soya May Benefit the Diet, but It Could Be Damaging the Planet

By REBECCA McQUILLAN

Standing in the queue at a cafe recently, I overheard a girl asking for soya milk in her coffee. She didn’t see the meaningful look exchanged by the couple behind her, the one that clearly didn’t mean "what a great idea!".

The couple went for syrupladen vats of cow’s milk, so we can presume they had no first-hand experience of a dairy intolerance, one of the reasons you might opt for soya milk; another is that including at least 25g of soya a day in a diet low in saturated fat can help reduce cholesterol.

But health is not the only rationale for switching to soya. Those concerned about the welfare of intensively farmed dairy cattle and the environmental impact of the livestock industry count for a growing proportion of converts to soya products.

There’s no question that cattle farming has major environmental implications and this is a worry for environmentalists, as the consumption of meat and dairy products is on the rise globally. While these foodstuffs can be a highly beneficial part of a balanced diet, humans do not require a diet rich in them and growing a crop directly for humans is much more efficient than raising animals who convert crops into food.

Animal rearing also uses large amounts of water and generates methane emissions – and then there is the fact huge areas of land are being set aside to grow food for intensively farmed animals. It’s here that the picture becomes more complicated, because soya is a major feed crop for cattle.

The UK dairy industry imports much of its cattle feed from the US and South America. This has two implications: the soya grown in these countries is often genetically modified, even though British supermarkets have a non-GM policy (last November, the Soil Association revealed the results of a study of British dairy cattle feed which found 51-per cent of soya feed was GM); plus, some of the soya being grown for feed is on land that was once rainforest and has been cleared. Brazil’s cultivated soya bean area rose from 11.7 million hectares in 1994 to 21 million in 2003. Suddenly, soya looks like part of the problem.

But not all soya is created equal. For example, soya specialist Alpro guarantees that the soya beans it uses are non-GM and grown on land that has not been cleared. We asked Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s about their sourcing policy for the soya used in their own-brand soya milk, including whether they stipulated that it should be grown on land that had not been deforested. Only Asda replied, confirming that beans used to make its soya milk, which is GM-free, were not sourced from reclaimed forested areas.

Opting for soya or other vegetarian food is not necessarily green in itself. The key question is: has it been sustainably produced? If so, then you’re doing the planet a favour.