Canada’s organic community is becoming anxious that work on developing a regulation to enforce its new national standard appears to have stalled.
Paddy Doherty, co-ordinator of the Organic Regulatory Committee, recently met with senior Agriculture Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials to express his concerns that the federal government appears to be losing interest in the subject.
“Once they called the election, we just fell off the radar altogether,” he said.
Doherty was assured Ottawa hasn’t forgotten about the organic industry and that ample resources are being devoted to create a regulatory framework for organic products.
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Michael Presley, director general of Agriculture Canada’s food value chain bureau, told him $500,000 has been committed to developing a regulation over the next 18 months and a team of three people is being assembled to oversee that process.
“That was very encouraging,” said Doherty.
In order to maintain access to the European Union, one of the biggest markets for organic products, Canada needs to have a regulated national standard in place that is deemed to be equivalent to what the EU uses.
On Aug. 27, the Committee on Organic Agriculture came to a consensus on the general principles of a new national standard, the first big step in that process.
But little progress has been made on developing rules to enforce that standard. In the past, delays could rightfully be blamed on divisions within the organic community. Some wanted government regulation, others didn’t. But that isn’t the case anymore, said Doherty.
“We want a government regulation. We want a law for organics in Canada,” he said.
It’s now up to Agriculture Canada and the inspection agency to write a draft regulation.
“The ball really is in their court, but it is up to us to keep badgering them.”
Along those lines Doherty has sent a letter to Andy Mitchell, the federal minister of agriculture, requesting a meeting to discuss the issue.
“I really want to get a meeting with the minister and have the minister back us up, to say, ‘yes, we do need a regulation.’ “
In his letter Doherty conveyed a sense of urgency over the looming Dec. 31, 2005, deadline to get on the EU’s list of approved trading partners.
He receives daily e-mails from growers and exporters concerned about what happens to them when the EU shuts its doors.
Debbie Miller, president of the Organic Crop Improvement Association, said the minister needs to generate some action on devising an organic regulation that goes beyond getting funding in place.
“I think everybody would like things to be moving along a lot quicker. We’re all looking at the Dec. 31, 2005, deadline and getting more and more anxious as time goes by.”
Miller, Doherty and many others in the organic industry think Canada will miss that deadline because it takes a minimum of two years to complete equivalency negotiations and Canada has yet to file its application.
Doherty has been told by the president of the inspection agency that Industry Canada is working on a plan for some sort of backup interim equivalency agreement if the deadline can’t be met.
Jodi Robinson, the trade policy officer with International Trade Canada who is in charge of the organic file, said she knows of no such backup strategy.
But she said the federal government will be working full bore to complete negotiations in the allotted time once a few revisions are made to the general principles section of the national standard.
