Soya certification schemes
Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) RTRS certification is often considered by the industry as one of the best of its kind, with buyers making the claim that if they purchase 100% RTRS soya, they are supporting sustainable production.1 But this is a highly problematic claim, as the vast majority of RTRS soya sales are based on credits, rather than physical flows of soya. Buyers thus might not know whether the producers of the actual products they are buying are engaging in deforestation or other ecosystem destruction. Buying credits is supposedly intended to encourage farmers to produce responsible soya, but the premium farmers receive for credits is too low to compensate them for not clearing land for soya production. As a result it is likely that most certified farms would not have engaged in land conversion even without the RTRS. On top of that, companies can sell RTRS soya or credits from their certified farms while still deforesting on non-certified farms. Claims of supporting sustainable production are therefore misleading, allowing companies a green image even if they are still contributing to human rights abuses and/or the destruction of nature. 1
See RTRS, RTRS claims [Website].
Governance and decision making
• The RTRS was initially conceived in 2004
by a committee whose members – Grupo Amaggi, Unilever, COOP, WWF, Dutch development organisation Cordaid and Brazilian smallholder organisation Fetraf-Sul – came together to prepare an international conference on responsible soya. The scheme was formally established in 2006, but Cordaid and Fetraf-Sul reportedly left the organisation committee in 2005 because they disagreed with not excluding GMO soya from the RTRS standard.2
2 The RTRS’s principles and criteria were finalised in 2010, after a series of consultations. See Hospes, A., van der Valk, O., & van der Mheen-Sluijer, J. (2012) pp.38-43.
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Chapter 3: Analysis of the major certification schemes
• The General Assembly is the RTRS’s highest decision-making body. All members, including both participants and observers, take part, though only participating members have a vote.3
• The RTRS’s Executive Board is composed
of a maximum of 15 representatives from each of the three member constituencies (producers; industry, trade and finance; civil society), which all have the same voting rights regardless of their share in membership.4
• The RTRS is a Community Member of the ISEAL Alliance.5
3 RTRS, Who we are [Website]; see also RTRS, Members [Website]. 4 RTRS, Who we are [Website] 5 ISEAL Alliance, ISEAL community members [Website]
