Earlier this summer, a senior Canadian trade official issued a dire warning to organic growers, processors and certifiers.
If they didn’t ratify a national standard before year’s end, they would be on the outside looking in when Europe shuts its doors on countries that haven’t negotiated an equivalency agreement, said Roxan Hoshangi, agricultural affairs officer at the Canadian Mission to the European Union.
“We really need to move on this as soon as possible,” she warned.
In her estimation it would take a minimum of two years and maybe a lot more to negotiate standard equivalency with Europe. Since Europe’s deadline for equivalency is Dec. 31, 2005, that means negotiations should begin by the end of next month at the very least.
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That is not going to happen.
Government officials are now hoping to have industry consensus on the standard by the end of March. But that’s only the first step. It would then have to be approved by the Canadian General Standards Board and the Standards Council of Canada.
That March deadline is “pretty optimistic,” said Bill Breckman, special organics adviser with Agriculture Canada. So is the idea of achieving consensus among a sharply divided industry.
Forty-two percent of the 37 people who cast votes on the first ballot of the revised standard rejected it. Breckman is confident that with a few revisions there can be a meeting of minds before the second ballot.
“What we want to do is make sure that we don’t go to another ballot until we’re pretty sure that the majority of the people are in agreement with it, so that we don’t have a prolonged process once again to look at all the comments and concerns people have, and miss our European deadlines.”
In the meantime, the federal government has embarked on a parallel process to develop a system to regulate the standard. That system will in essence convert what is a voluntary standard into a mandatory one.
Approximately 40 producers, processors, certifiers and government officials attended a workshop in Ottawa last week to determine what options are available for regulation, including what body will act as enforcer.
“The logical place is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency because Agriculture Canada doesn’t have the capability or the mandate to manage regulation,” said Breckman.
Government officials will figure out how much each regulatory option will cost and then consult with industry representatives on which they prefer. Meetings will be held in each of the prairie provinces this winter. Feedback can also be provided by telephone and e-mail.
“We’re trying to get it moving as fast as we can without destroying the democracy of it,” said Breckman.
If all goes as planned, the industry will have agreed upon a national organic standard and recommended a regulatory framework to government by the end of March.
That won’t be good enough to meet Hoshangi’s minimum two year negotiating time line, but Breckman is optimistic that European negotiators will have streamlined their equivalency process by the time Canada applies.
“Hopefully they can speed up their process enough that they can accommodate our application,” he said.
