UK Soy Manifesto

What is it?

The Manifesto, aligned with AFI, is a collective industry commitment to work together to ensure all physical shipments of soy to the UK are deforestation and conversion-free (cut-off date of January 2020 at the latest), fully implemented immediately where possible and no later than 2025.

The Manifesto has five commitments:

• Set a deforestation and conversion-free commitment with a cut-off date of January 2020 or earlier;
• Ask direct suppliers to adopt and cascade the same commitment;
• Integrate Manifesto commitments within direct supplier commercial contractual requirements, and support compliance;
• Publicly disclose progress; and,
• Encourage harmonized monitoring, verification, and reporting.

Signatories explicitly commit to eliminating deforestation and the conversion of other natural ecosystems from soy supply chains with a cut-off date of January 2020 or earlier.

This approach aims to extend to the European level.

The commitments should apply to all soy supplied by the company (or used/embedded within products) for the UK market.

Signatories commit to working together to achieve this goal and request that their suppliers adopt the same commitments and incorporate these requirements within commercial contractual requirements. All signatories commit to publicly disclosing their progress annually.

The aim of the Manifesto is twofold – to remove the market for unsustainably produced soy (breaking the link with soy produced on converted land) and provide a market that rewards and incentivizes deforestation and conversion-free production. The commitment should be supported by a publicly available, detailed action plan and fully implemented as soon as possible but no later than 2025.