The producers of GM crops are also consumers. In countries where marketing of GM food products is authorised, they are widely used as food and food ingredients.

Growing quantities of GM foods and feeds are being imported even into countries which do not grow them for themselves. For example, animal fodder based on maize and soybean meal is imported in large amounts into Europe, mainly from the Americas. Until a couple of years ago, it was possible to secure commodity quantities on non-GM soybeans from Brazil but farmers in that country began illegally to import the seeds from Argentina so the Brazilian crop became increasingly GM.

In 2003 the Brazilian government agreed that GM soya could be cultivated for just one year. A year later this was extended for a further year while early in 2005 legislation was passed agreeing that GM soya cultivation was there to stay and was to be legal. That will making sourcing of large amounts on non-GM soya fodder for European use increasingly difficult if not impossible.

With the effective abandonment of the moratorium on EU approvals of more GM foods, growing numbers of GM products are on sale in European supermarkets. A recent count (February 2005) showed about 77 of them on the shelves.

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