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Dec
Following Exposés on Lax Import Oversight, Organic Integrity Strengthened by Enforcement Rule
(Beyond Pesticides, December 4, 2024) According to interviews conducted by Farm Progress, the U.S. organic food supply chain has been under pressure to come into compliance with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s March 19, 2024, Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) final rule (See Daily News here). “We are now seeing up to 95 percent of NOP (National Organic Program) import certificates that are coming in are valid, which means that we really closed the gap on products coming into the United States without an import certificate,” says Jennifer Tucker, PhD, deputy administrator for USDA National Organic Program (NOP). “We really closed the door on illegitimate shipments.”
Organic advocates welcome accountability measures to ensure the integrity of organic certification in the spirit of continuous improvement, which is regarded as a tenet of the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA). As communities and businesses across the country anticipate a change in decision-making philosophy regarding the role of federal intervention in the marketplace, environmental and public health advocates remain clear-eyed on the importance of improving the regulatory system to advance public health, biodiversity, and climate.
Concerns Raised by Organic Supply Chain
The National Organic Coalition, with member groups including Beyond Pesticides, summarizes the five core changes that the SOE rule establishes for organic standards:
- “Regulatory changes to require import certificates and additional handling operations to become certified.
- Codification of the requirement that certifiers conduct unannounced inspections for a minimum of 5% of the operations they certify annually.
- Consistent implementation of existing and additional record-keeping requirements for operations and certification agencies to ensure traceability.
- A requirement that certifiers conduct supply chain audits for high-risk operations.
- Requirements for certified operations to develop fraud prevention plans.”
According to reporting, farmers, certifiers, and other members of the organic supply chain are expressing concern at the rollout of the new regulations with its associated requirements. Farmers have voiced concerns about the significant amount of work hours that have to be allocated to prepare for implementation of SOE to ensure that they are up to code operating as part of complex, international supply chains. At the same time, organic certifiers are raising their fees for certification to cover the cost of additional training and staff time, given the increase in frequency and depth of inspections. In preparation for the SOE rule going into effect, NOP offered additional educational resources through its Organic Integrity Learning Center. Additionally, there has been a doubling of NOP staff since 2017 when high-profile instances of organic fraud emerged in the marketplace. See Daily News here for an analysis of some of these fraud claims, investigations, and legal consequences.
Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule
The new requirements in the final SOE rule aim to strengthen the integrity of the organic label through enhanced oversight and enforcement of existing program regulations, and the introduction of new requirements to address occurrences of fraud in organic supply chains. As the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) lays out in a 2023 announcement, the rule is expansive in covering a range of regulatory topics, including:
- “[A]pplicability of the regulations and exemptions from organic certification;
- National Organic Program Import Certificates;
- recordkeeping and product traceability;
- certifying agent personnel qualifications and training;
- standardized certificates of organic operation;
- unannounced on-site inspections of certified operations;
- oversight of certification activities;
- foreign conformity assessment systems;
- certification of producer group operations;
- labeling of nonretail containers;
- annual update requirements for certified operations;
- compliance and appeals processes; and
- calculating organic content of multi-ingredient products.”
The Federal Register notice of the SOE asserts that the rulemaking is designed to “strengthen oversight and enforcement of the production, handling, and sale of organic agricultural products.” It continues, “The amendments protect integrity in the organic supply chain and build consumer and industry trust in the USDA organic label by strengthening organic control systems, improving farm-to-market traceability, and providing robust enforcement of the USDA organic regulations.” Reporting by The Washington Post notes, “Key updates to the rules include requiring certification of more of the businesses, such as brokers and traders, at critical links in organic supply chains. It also requires organic certificates for all organic imports and increases inspections and reporting requirements of certified operations.”
First, all members of the supply chain are now required to have certification (including brokers, exporters, and traders, among others), although there are also additional exemptions for certain “low-risk activities” including facilities that have minimal responsibilities, such as processing and packaging goods.
Second, all certified organic products imported into the U.S. must be declared to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol using data from NOP Import Certificates. Certifiers rely on these certificates, housed within the NOP Organic Integrity Database (INTEGRITY), to track compliance.
Third, each member of the supply chain must maintain records and establish fraud prevention plans to ensure there are zero gaps in accountability.
Fourth, non-retail containers (a.k.a containers that store organic products before entering a retail or purchasing location) must have the organic seal to ensure accountability.
Fifth, digital organic certifications entered into the INTEGRITY system must have a standardized format and data fields to ensure standardized compliance.
Sixth, the definition change from grower groups to “producer group operations,” when accounting for imports of organic products from groups of individual producers who decide to export to the U.S. as a collective unit, is intended to standardize the quality of organic products in non-U.S. and European Union contexts. This includes the addition of a requirement that these farmer groups must incorporate binding internal control systems (ICSs) as a fixture of their operational structures. IFOAM-International describes ICSs as:
“[T]he part of a documented quality assurance system that allows an external certification body to delegate the periodic inspection of individual group members to an identified body or unit within the certified operator. This means that the third party certification bodies only have to inspect the well-functioning of the system, as well as to perform a few spot-check re-inspections of individual smallholders.”
Advocates view this shift to strengthening definitions and binding force of internal control systems as an opportunity to strengthen organic integrity and ensure long-term smooth adoption across different cultural and market contexts. There will be a future Daily News delving into changes in EU and U.S. laws going into 2025 on definitions around internal control systems (ICSs) and producer groups.
Seventh, organic inspectors will now be required to conduct unannounced on-site inspections of at least 5% of all operations they certify each year; they will also need to engage in “traceability audits.”
See deeper analysis by SCS Global Services, an international third-party certification entity, here. See here for a comparative guideline for regulations pre- and post-SOE developed by the Agricultural Marketing Service.
Call to Action
Organic advocates are concerned that the burdens imposed on organic farmers through high certification costs, as well as upfront expenses that come with transitioning and maintaining organic land management systems including soil testing, training, and marketing/transportation, should not fall on farmers. “Organic farming should be a public good that is treated as such through federal agricultural support programs in the Farm Bill,” says Max Sano, organic program associate at Beyond Pesticides.
See Action of the Week, Tell Congress to ensure that organic programs, and their funding, do not lapse this fall, to inform your elected officials what is at stake.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Source: Farm Progress
