Canada is moving toward a mandatory, government-regulated organic system, which officials hope will be in place in time to meet a looming European Union deadline.
Exporting countries have until Dec. 31, 2005, to negotiate organic regulation equivalency agreements with one of the most important organic markets in the world.
EU officials have implied that a country operating under a voluntary system would have difficulty getting on the coveted third country list, said Bill Breckman, special adviser organics with Agriculture Canada.
“They have raised very serious concerns about it.”
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In response to those concerns the industry has requested federal government assistance in moving from a voluntary to a regulated system.
An organic regulatory committee has developed a draft of how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would enforce a revised national organic standard.
The committee was showcased to the organic community through a series of meetings that started in January and ended late last week.
“Basically, it has been a pretty positive response across the country,” said Breckman, who is co-ordinating the process.
There have been the usual suspicions about government involvement in farming, but Breckman explained to producers that Ottawa is simply acting at the behest of the industry.
CFIA managers plan to review the results of the meetings and prepare a recommendation for the minister of agriculture on whether to implement new rules governing organic enforcement.
“We hope to be able to make a positive recommendation to the minister by the end of April,” said Breckman.
Meanwhile, there has also been some progress on the organic standard the CFIA would be regulating.
A committee of 43 industry participants has been attempting to revise the National Standard of Canada for Organic Agriculture since January, 2002 to no avail.
“As far as I know they have resolved all of their major concerns,” Breckman said.
That includes those raised by Quebec’s organic community, which was strongly opposed to previous versions of the standard.
The latest draft is made up of three parts – the actual standard, a more detailed document containing guiding principals and a permitted substance list.
The first section will be going to ballot before the end of the month, the second and third sections will be voted on a month later because there’s still work to be done on them.
Application forms to get on the EU’s third country list are already being filled out in anticipation of the standard achieving consensus.
There is a sense of urgency because equivalency negotiations with the EU take two years to complete.
At an exporting seminar held in Saskatoon last fall, Roxan Hoshangi, agricultural affairs officer at the Canadian Mission to the EU, warned organic exporters they risked being locked out of that lucrative market if a standard wasn’t agreed upon by December 2003.
“We simply weren’t able to get it done by then,” said Breckman.
But he thinks a lot of countries are in a similar situation so the EU may be processing applications quicker than it has in the past or possibly extending the deadline, although he isn’t counting on that.
