13 November 2008

The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) Criteria Development Group, the working group responsible for the development of Principles and Criteria for responsible soy production, has reached agreement on Principles and Criteria for the responsible production of soy for a second round of public consultation.

The draft Principles and Criteria will go out for their final round of public consultation around November 15. The public consultation will last 60 days, during which the document will be on the RTRS website.

Christopher Wells, the RTRS President who attended the last DG meeting, reports to RTRS members that: 'The DG is comfortable with the vast majority of items in this text. As is expected, there are differences of opinion on some points, but the DG's experts are confident that they can find a common ground at their next meeting in March 2009, in Buenos Aires.' This would enable the adoption of the Criteria at the next RTRS General Assembly meeting that is scheduled for May 2009.

The RTRS DG group further decided to set up a small working group to continue working on a draft certification scheme to discuss at the next meeting in March. This will ensure that a certification scheme can also be adopted in May next year.

As the Principles and Criteria focus on the development of a standard for responsible soy production and the RTRS is dedicated to promoting sustainability all along the soy value chain the group also worked on a Code of Conduct. This Code of Conduct will apply to all RTRS members, be they soy farmers, traders, industry, retailers, banks, consulting firms or NGOs.

Furthermore a document for consultation on supply chain organisation was discussed. This document discusses how the RTRS intends to deal with different existing supply chain mechanisms.

Finally a project plan for Pillar II was developed. Under the two pillar approach that has been adopted by the RTRS, Pillar 1 is the market based voluntary certification scheme and Pillar 2 is a much broader concept providing support for the delivery of RTRS goals.

MVO is one of the members of the RTRS Criteria Development Group. If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact Marieke Leegwater: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it