Round Table on Responsible Soy Association

The RTRS Standard for Responsible Soy Production was drafted by the RTRS Development Group of Principles and Criteria for Responsible Soy (DG), which comprises representatives from all three RTRS member constituencies: soy producers, industry and civil society organizations. Between October 2007 and March 2009, the development group held three transparent and open stakeholder consultations during which all stakeholders were invited to provide input.
In each step of the development of the RTRS standard, the DG took the ISEAL Codes of Good Practice for developing and assessing multi-stakeholder standards (www.isealalliance.org) into account. The ISEAL Codes provide guidelines for open and transparent standard-setting procedures. The two-year multi-stakeholder process led to the ‘RTRS Principles and Criteria for Responsible Soy Production: Field Testing Version’ being published in May 2009. The same version was used by National Technical Groups (NTGs) in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, India and China to initiate national interpretation procedures. Also, producers and auditors field-tried this version in various countries.
An International Technical Group (ITG) was convened in March 2010 to review comments coming out of NTGs, public consultations and feedback from field trials and diagnostic audits. Guidance was included from the RTRS Executive Board on the issue of land clearance. At their final meeting, in Brazil in March, 2010, the multi-stakeholder group reached a final set of auditable Principles and Criteria that could be used as a foundation to a certification framework.
This document, after being approved at the 2010 RTRS General Assembly, became the RTRS Standard for Responsible Soy Production – Version 1.0. It is often referred to simply as ‘the RTRS standard’.