Canada’s organic growers have received a welcome reprieve from their most vital market.
The Council of the European Union has unanimously agreed to extend a deadline to Dec. 31, 2006, that would force countries to have equivalent organic standards to the EU before they could trade organic products there.
The decision provides Canada’s organic community with one more year to implement a new standard and develop regulations that will be on par with those of the EU.
But a new report indicates the EU’s model isn’t exactly one that should be emulated.
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According to the European Court of Auditors, the system is deeply flawed from on-farm inspections through to reports filed by member states to the commission.
In Europe, agri-environment or AE support is paid to farmers deemed to be using environmentally beneficial practices. For the period 2000-06, about $19.2 billion has been earmarked for AE support, a large portion of which will be directed to organic farmers.
However, the recent audit of AE expenditures unveiled a litany of problems with the EU’s organic system.
“Annual implementation reports, which should give assurance about the objectiveness and effectiveness of the inspections system, are incomplete and not reliable,” stated the audit.
Even if they were complete and accurate, the type of information requested wouldn’t give assurance about the objectiveness and effectiveness of organic inspections, it said.
Commission checks in seven member states in 1998-2001 uncovered important weaknesses in the inspection system, but the findings were not properly followed up and no further checks have been made since 2001.
Problems exist at the member state level as well. The audit determined that organic inspectors were poorly trained and that their inspections were conducted at inappropriate times, relied on inconclusive visual checks and were largely dependent on self-declaration.
In France, for instance, the inspections were based on declarations made by the farmers in parcel and grazing logbooks.
“In these documents the farmer himself enters applications of fertilizers and phytosanitary products, planting, mowing and harvesting activities and grazing periods. The checkers are not obliged to go beyond simply verifying that the data have been entered in these logbooks,” the report said.
The audit provides a scathing indictment of Europe’s organic inspection system but weaknesses are showing up in other ways as well.
A few months ago the United Kingdom’s first concerted investigation into organic food fraud resulted in fines to a butcher for labelling offences and to a farmer for using organic certification without proper accreditation.
Waning confidence in the EU organic system raises interesting questions about what Canada is developing.
Joe Southall, the Ottawa bureau
newscrat in charge of devising the regulation, refused to comment on what is happening in Europe and what it means to be seeking equivalency with a flawed system. However, he insisted the regulation under development in Canada will be the best that can be used.
“We won’t have any situations where there may be problems or at least I hope there won’t be any problems,” he said.
While the proposed new national standard incorporates features from European and American standards, when the document is combined with the new regulation it will form a made-in-Canada system that will protect consumers from fraud.
