New organic standards put MOFGA in bind Certifying agency boards may not include farmers

They took a decade to create and stirred up a firestorm of controversy, but the first national standards for growing and processing organic food were released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The directors of Maine’s certifying agency, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, are hailing the standards as long overdue but acknowledge that a conflict-of-interest clause in the rules jeopardizes MOFGA’s status as the state’s organic certifying agency.

Eric Sideman of MOFGA said Wednesday afternoon that the new standards require all certified organic farmers to recuse themselves from serving on the board of any certifying agency. “MOFGA is a nonprofit agency,” said Sideman. “Who else would be on our board? Our entire membership is organic farmers.”

Sideman said MOFGA administrators were scrambling Wednesday to come up with solutions. “We are not sure how we are going to deal with this,” said Sideman. “We may have to give up our certification program.” MOFGA is the country’s oldest and largest organic certifying agency.

Aside from the conflict-of-interest issue, Sideman had praise for the new rules which will allow the country’s $6 billion-a-year industry to label foods and crops “USDA Organic,” a move that is predicted to advantageously affect both marketing and price.

Stewart Smith, a former Maine agriculture commissioner and a professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Maine, said Wednesday that the new standards “should give consumers some comfort. There was a lot of confusion out there. It is great to have some standards in place that consumers can rely on.”

Smith said he had some ambivalence, however, fearing that “once these types of standards get federalized, it will bring a lot of different players in. Some, I’m afraid, will look a lot like more conventional farmers.”

Maine growers and consumers, along with organic advocates across the country, rejected the first set of proposed rules in 1997. For the past three years they have been fighting to have the rules include a ban on genetically engineered foods, irradiation, and the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

The final standards will replace a mishmash of state regulations and are called “the strictest, most comprehensive organic standards in the world,” by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. At a Washington news conference Wednesday morning, Glickman said, “Consumers who want to buy organic can do so with the confidence of knowing exactly what it is they’re buying.”

The standards state that organic food must consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients; cannot include GE foods; cannot be irradiated; and cannot be grown on soil fertilized with sewage sludge. Meat and poultry must be fed 100 percent organically grown feed and be given access to outdoor land and pasture. Use of antibiotics is prohibited.

Sideman said the new rules also would make it easier for whole dairy herds to convert to organic; regulate feed; and set realistic composting regulations.

USDA was required by law in 1990 to develop the rules, and it first proposed a set of regulations in 1997. They were withdrawn after consumers and farmers strongly objected to the inclusion of GE crops, irradiation, and sewage sludge as fertilizer.

USDA received a reported 275,000 comments from opponents to the controversial, original proposals. According to Sideman only one other issue – tobacco – generated a larger public outcry.

The revamped proposals, which were released Wednesday, received 40,774 comments, most of them in favor of the changes.

In Maine, 200 farmers are certified as organic, and with the new rules comes a requirement that any farmer making more than $5,000 a year by selling organic products must become certified. Sideman said that might affect an additional 200 farmers.

Across the country, 10,000 farmers claim to be organic but fewer than 7,000 are certified as such.

Experts estimate that it could be 18 months or longer before foods bearing the new organic seal begin appearing in stores.