Organic leaders are dismayed that a clause in Canada’s proposed federal organic regulations exempts exports from having to be certified to the Canadian standard.
“It is an alarming thing, and it has just sort of crept up on us,” said Wally Hamm, president of Pro-Cert Organic Systems Ltd., one of Canada’s largest certification bodies.
Under the proposed Organic Products Regulations recently published in the Canada Gazette, “there would be no specific requirement that exported products meet Canadian regulatory requirements.”
Combined with the fact that the regulation does not govern intraprovincial trade, the result is a largely toothless document, critics say.
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“You end up getting a totally irrelevant regulation. It’s only dealing with interprovincial trade,” Hamm said.
“What’s the purpose of the Canadian system?”
But according to Michel Saumur, national manager of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Canadian Organic Office, the clause is not as all-inclusive as it sounds. It only applies to farmers who produce product exclusively for export markets.
“If (the producer) sells one container in Canada, he doesn’t have a choice, he has to be certified to the Canadian organic standard,” he said.
Saumur also noted that it is just a proposal. The public has until April 29 to submit comments.
Ted Settle, president of the Organic Federation of Canada, is also concerned about such a major change to the 2006 version of the regulation, which was published but pulled back for revisions before it was enforced.
He said the change was made at the behest of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, which felt forcing exporters to certify their goods to the Canadian standard would be an additional burden that could interfere with trade. That argument is outlined in the proposed regulation.
“The OPR requirement for exported products to meet both the proposed regulations and the foreign country requirements, when these products are destined solely for export and will not enter the Canadian market, could be overly burdensome and could impose unnecessary costs.”
Zettel doesn’t buy that argument. The original concept behind the regulation was that growers would have their goods certified to the Canadian standard, which would then be deemed adequate by importing countries that have negotiated equivalency agreements with Canada.
No additional certification would be necessary.
Those agreements are being negotiated, and Zettel is confident they will soon be concluded.
But even in the absence of such agreements, he said, it is not burdensome or too costly to tack on an extra certification once the Canadian certification in place.
It is a “minor addition” rather than a complete duplication, he added.
Zettel doesn’t want to see a system where neighbouring organic farms are growing the same commodity under two sets of production standards.
He agreed with Hamm that ignoring exports would damage the credibility of the regulation because Canada is primarily an exporter of agricultural commodities.
Saumur said Zettel is mistaken on the origin of the export clause.
It did not come from another government department but rather from exporters.
