Canada is finally out of the starting blocks in the race to organic regulation. After eating its fair share of dust kicked up by the front runners, the organic industry has come up with a strategy to get back on track.
The European Union and the United States have regulated standards in place, but Canada is still wrestling with revisions to its national standard.
And the organic industry is really lagging in developing a system to police that standard. It took the formation of an ad hoc organic regulatory committee earlier this year to get the ball rolling on the regulation issue.
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A few weeks ago the committee announced it would develop a regulation action plan to be implemented by Dec. 31, 2005.
It is no coincidence the deadline is also the date by which exporters must be on the EU’s list of approved countries.
Canadian organic traders are now able to access the EU through a backdoor route by negotiating with European nations on a country-by-country basis. But that door slams shut on Dec. 31, 2005, said Paddy Doherty, co-ordinator of the regulatory committee.
Starting January 2006, the EU will only do business with countries it considers to have an organic program equivalent to the one it uses.
Doherty said Canada’s revised organic standard, which should be in place this fall, will meet the EU’s criteria. But there is a pile of work to be done on developing acceptable regulations to enforce that standard.
Once it is developed, the regulation will become law under the Canadian Agricultural Products Act.
“That much we know. Just about everything else is yet to be determined,” said Doherty.
He expects the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will be the enforcement body and that a “mixed bag” of private and public officials will govern an oversight body, but that’s as far as the planning has gone.
As is the case with most regulated systems, the costs will be shouldered by those being regulated. Doherty estimates a producer farming 100 acres already pays about $475 a year to be certified by a credible agency.
A regulated system would add approximately 15 percent, or another $72, to that annual fee.
The benefit is that it will keep trade flowing to one of Canada’s largest organic export destinations. Having a Canadian organic seal regulated by a government agency should also improve domestic consumption of the goods.
“Consumers are telling us, when we do surveys here in British Columbia anyway, that we’re driving them nuts with all these different designations,” said Doherty, who is from Quesnel, B.C.
“We’re competing against a uniform USDA seal right now that is really having some effect in the marketplace. It’s really working.”
He said Canadian consumers want a single designation they can trust and that’s what the committee will deliver.
“Despite any rhetoric to the contrary I think the public does trust government regulation for the most part,” he said.
The federal government will apply to the EU on Dec. 31, 2003, to have Canada placed on the list of equivalent countries. There is a two-year review period for that decision to be made.
The industry will use that time to consult the entire organic sector, prepare a regulation based on those consultations and have it become law so that Canada can cross the finish line and join its main trading partners.
“We are behind but we can use that as a motivating factor,” said Doherty.
