The same day Canada lived up to its commitment to establish an organic regulation before the end of 2006, the European Union once again waffled on its promise to crack down on organic imports.
On Dec. 21, the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers extended its deadline for third country equivalency by one year to Dec. 31, 2007.
That is the new date by which exporters must establish an organic regime similar to what is used by the EU if they want to continue sending goods to the world’s largest organic marketplace.
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The extension paves the way for Canadian exporters to continue accessing a market that purchased $28.5 million of Canadian organic products in 2005, 63 percent of Canada’s total organic exports that year.
The news of the reprieve came on the same day that Canada published the final version of its new Organic Products Regulations.
Officials at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had been scrambling to complete the regulation in time to meet the EU’s deadline.
But as it did with the original Dec. 31, 2005, deadline, the EU again made a last minute decision to move its target back a year, suggesting that it is having just as much trouble implementing the proposed new import rule as exporters are having meeting it.
Michel Saumur, project manager for the CFIA’s Organic Production System Task Force, said only seven countries have received the EU’s coveted third country status to date.
If the EU closed its doors to all other exporters it would be in a heap of trouble because the seven countries on its approved list are relatively small players.
“They couldn’t meet the (EU’s) demand for organic production,” said Saumur.
The other dilemma was that 30 to 40 countries, including Canada, have submitted applications for equivalency, creating a massive backlog of paperwork for European regulators to sift through.
“Europe did not have the time to review and evaluate all these submissions before Dec. 31,” said Saumur.
“We speculate these are the reasons why they extended their deadline.”
But he doesn’t regret rushing to get Canada’s regulation finalized before Dec. 31 because there was a lot more at stake than maintaining access to the EU.
“Our No. 1 goal was to protect the Canadian consumer. It was not to meet the European requirement for an equivalency regime,” said Saumur.
