There is a good chance Canada’s national organic regulation will be delayed by a full year, say industry executives.
“(The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is) entertaining thoughts of delay and it is largely because the standard isn’t ready,” said Laura Telford, executive director of Canadian Organic Growers, the group in charge of updating the standard.
The federal Department of Justice is reluctant to introduce a regulation Dec. 14 when revisions to the standard are unlikely to be ratified until March 2009.
Telford said the standard was last updated in December 2006, but with the pending regulation it has to change from a voluntary to a mandatory standard and the existing document does not meet government requirements for a mandatory standard.
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“There was a lot of loosey goosey stuff in there.”
Some of the changes were cosmetic, like replacing the word “may” with “shall,” but there were also major modifications like removing the section on labelling that is covered off in the regulation.
The government also insisted in stripping out all references to certification bodies.
The standard left a lot of decisions up to those bodies, which means new criteria were required for how many decisions are made.
Another challenge was making sure the document complied with international rules for standard development and that it was harmonized with other international standards, a process that required 10 times the changes that the industry expected.
“It has been almost like opening Pandora’s box,” said Telford.
“Those are all of our excuses why we’re late with our homework.”
Matthew Holmes, managing director of the Canadian wing of the Organic Trade Association, said it will likely be late winter or early spring of 2009 before the standard is ratified.
The department of justice will then need to ensure the revised document agrees with the regulation.
He expects that will result in a one-year delay in introducing the national regulation.
Holmes said a lot of people believe the benefits of the delay outweigh the negatives. But not everybody does.
“There are certainly people who are frustrated. They’ve been working on this for years and we kind of got within sight of it, so they are understandably wanting to push on.”
But he said the standard revision was necessary because there were a lot of areas where the industry was overstepping its authority and it was a document largely designed by producers that ignored some of the needs of the processing sector.
No markets are likely to be jeopardized by the delay. Europe had stipulated that Canada have a regulation in place by the end of 2008, but once again that deadline has been delayed. The original deadline was Dec. 31, 2005.
Holmes has been unable to determine when the new deadline is, but he is under the impression Europe is doing everything it can to encourage imports of organic products, so it is becoming less forceful with its demands.
Telford’s biggest fear is the Canadian regulation will be delayed to the point where the government uses it as an excuse to avoid regulating the industry altogether.
“That would be the nightmare scenario for the organic industry because we have pushed long and hard for this thing and to get this close and lose it would be really horrible.”
But in reality, she believes there will be little consequence to any possible delay other than giving farmers and processors much needed extra time to comply with the looming regulation.
“So what if people don’t see the organic label in the stores on Dec. 14? The world isn’t going to stop moving,” she said.
The industry has requested government implement the regulation as soon as possible after the national standard is revised.
Telford expects an official decision June 2 from the CFIA about whether the regulation will be delayed.
