Canada’s organic regulator won’t investigate why a lentils shipment was contaminated with glyphosate, but a certifier says he will get to the bottom of it.
The European Union issued a rapid alert notification April 1, saying it had rejected a shipment of green and red organic lentils from Turkey and Canada for exceeding its tolerance for glyphosate residue.
The green lentils in the shipment were found to contain 1.41 parts per million and the red lentils 1.14 ppm of glyphosate. There is zero tolerance for glyphosate residue in organic crops in Canada and Europe.
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Michel Saumur, national manager of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Canada Organic Office, said his department is responsible for monitoring interprovincial trade, imports and exports to countries where there is an equivalency agreement in place.
Canada is negotiating an equivalency agreement with Europe but nothing is signed yet, so European regulators have the responsibility to investigate the lentil case.
“Under the Canada Organic regime, we don’t have any regulatory authority over this product,” said Saumur.
Wally Hamm, general manager of Pro-Cert Organic Systems Ltd., isn’t comfortable leaving it at that.
“I believe that the industry and the certifiers in particular have an obligation here to follow up and find out what exactly happened and if there is a problem in the certification industry in terms of due diligence,” he said.
Hamm said it’s critical that the industry get to the bottom of the incident because the amount of glyphosate residue detected by the Europeans suggests something beyond herbicide spray drift or glyphosate contained in precipitation, which would be in the parts per billion.
The level of residue detected by the Europeans suggests that some of the lentils in the shipment were directly treated with glyphosate or that conventional lentils were included in the organic shipment.
Hamm said certifiers need to investigate whether the lentils came from Canada and then trace them back through the handling system to the responsible farms.
Saumur said European regulators will likely be in contact with the certifiers involved in the shipment. Growers would face suspension or cancellation of their organic certification if certifiers determined there was intentional fraud.
Canada is conducting equivalency negotiations with Europe, in which the two parties identify critical variances in their certification systems.
“The next step is signing an agreement, so we’re very close,” said Saumur.
Canada signed an equivalency agreement with the United States in 2009. The lentil incident would have been handled differently if it had happened in that market.
“We’d be all over it,” said Saumur.
