Our soy commitment

What is soy/soya - and what do I call it?

Soya and soy are the same ingredient but when it’s used in food and animal feed products the food industry calls it soy. 99% of the soy we use as a business is used as animal feed in supply chains rather than a meat-free product, because it’s high in protein.

Our soy footprint

Our soy footprint is the amount of soy we use in Co-op products, both directly and indirectly as animal feed. We report our soy footprint on an annual basis in our sustainability report.

Co-op’s ambition

In line with our Future of Food ambition, we take a responsible sourcing approach to all the ingredients we use in our products - including the animal and fish feed used in producing them. Working to tackle deforestation and conversion is also a key part of our Climate Plan.

We recognise that soy can be linked to negative impacts on the environment and communities, particularly deforestation and land conversion.

Our ambition is that all soy used in Co-op products, including embedded in animal feed, will be deforestation and conversion free (with a cut-off date of 2020) and responsibly sourced by the end of 2025.

Our approach

We know change needs to happen at scale to both enable the changes in our supply chains and to tackle deforestation and conversion. We work in several collaborative groups - Retail Soy Group, Soy Transparency Coalition and The UK Sustainable Commodities Initiative to increase transparency and engage with the wider industry.

We were a founding signatory of the UK Soy Manifesto (UKSM), which aimed to ensure all physical shipments of soy to the UK are deforestation and conversion free by the end of 2025. Despite cross-industry effort and progress in some areas it has become clear there significant risk we will not reach the full commitment against this timeline – you can read a more detailed explanation on the progress and remaining challenges on the UKSM statement.

We are also signatories to WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment to Nature - working to halve the environmental impact of UK Baskets by 2030.

Sourcing

We initially covered our footprint with Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) credits - covering 100% of our footprint from 2018-2020. Since 2021, we've covered our footprint with Regional RTRS credits, and a smaller proportion physically certified through mass balance or segregated models and low-risk origin sourcing.

Credits support more responsible soy production - an important first step but are not an endpoint. We’re committed to doing more, and our ambition means having reduced dependency on RTRS credits and more direct physical sourcing of responsibly produced soy - either through certification schemes or verified deforestation and conversion-free sourcing regions or landscapes.

We are working with our suppliers to achieve our ambition and looking at ways we can support landscape approaches - you can read our full policy here. Alignment is crucial and we are supportive of the industry development of credible monitoring, verification and reporting systems.

Our commitment applies to all suppliers of our own brand products. However, initial engagement is focusing on our fresh protein suppliers, who account for around 70% of our soy footprint.

Innovation

We work with our suppliers and other partners on sustainable and innovative feed solutions and share our findings. We also engage with feed companies to work towards more sustainable feed.

Advocacy/Campaigning

• Signatory to the UK Soy Manifesto - working to ensure all physical shipments of soy to the UK to be deforestation and conversion free with a cut-off date of January 1st 2020.

• Founding member of the UK Roundtable for Sustainable Soy – The roundtable brings together stakeholders the UK soya market, providing a pre-competitive space for companies and industry associations to work together to achieve a shared goal of a secure, resilient, sustainable supply of soya to the UK.

• Member, Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS) – The Round Table on Responsible Soy is a civil organization that promotes responsible production, processing and trading of soy on a global level.

• Through UK Soy Manifesto and directly we’ve engaged with soy traders to improve transparency (vital to addressing risks in soy) and were signatories to an open letter to the National Congress of Brazil on the protection of the Amazon.

Reporting

We publish information on the soy used in our own brand products in our annual sustainability report. This includes volumes, origin and traders in our supply chain.