this is dave rogers i'm a policy advisor with the north east organic farming association of a moment this is another in a series of conversations we've been having with folks about policy issues related to organic agriculture and food system in general and today we will be taking a look at a subject that a lot of people have questions about and don't fully understand and that is how organic standards and regulations are developed and how they sort of how they guide the production and manufacture of organic foods and very pleased to have today someone who is very well positioned to talk about all this dr gene richardson gene is a retired professor of farmers vermonter going forward as a program of know from vermont that inspects farms and food manufacturers to ensure compliance with these organic standards and also recently as of just a couple weeks ago named to the chair position at the national organic standards board which is a u s d a board that is charged with developing organic standards and we'll talk more about this in a few moments so welcome here so let's just for folks who may not be you know clear about what we're talking about we're talking about organic standards what are some basic principles of organic standards or what are some you know what are we talking about we're talking about organic standards i think that's two main components to think about one is the system of the farm or the processing business but for the thinking of the farm there are things like there's passed your standards all  cows have to be outside and have access to the out of doors for so many months of the year and rotated through pastures like that and then the other aspect of it really relates to to the substances that you can use because  agriculture you are not supposed to be using any synthetics except for the limited number that's on what's called the national list and in the same way when you're making a product you're making cookies organic cookies you can only use the substances that are legally allowed to be used in those products so we're looking at systems and substances so you mention the you know grazing standard for a past so if for example certified organic dairy cattle will have to be out grazing exhibiting natural behaviors and yards in intensive confinement situation right and that's a basic principle of organic production that is correct for all livestock all livestock whether it's chickens or pigs or llamas whatever it is they have to be outside they have to be allowed to do their natural behaviors so chickens are supposed to be outside running around in pasture and so other thing that is so central is attending to the soil and its health right and so maybe you can talk a little bit about how what a central part soil handling soil producing soil caring for soil plays an standard get taken care of the soil good stewardship that is the primary underlying principle of organic agriculture so rather than to have the farmer think i'm producing milk say the farm really what you're trying to do is take care of the soil and maybe just your producing grass over the soil to protect that soil and to improve its quality over the years and so the soil so no synthetic pesticides right herbicides thanks kinds of all of those things ok so that's a couple of examples and then in food manufacture there are so many substances if you look at the right label on processed foods if you if you if it's a certified manufactured product you can be sure that all of those ingredients o organic when you have a there are three different labels that they have in the united states you can either have a product you know carrots for example that are one hundred percent organic and they can say one hundred percent on the label or it will say organic and that means that if it might be like the cookies i was talking about it can have five percent up to five percent of the ingredients the substances in it can be known organic if there's nothing organic but just because it's non organic again doesn't mean it can be g m o and it doesn't mean it can be something that's harmful to human  but they can't use the made with category of products they can't use this label this u s d a label on it but the other two categories can do so again it occurs to me that consumers have a lot of choices they go in the supermarket and they see labels of all sorts fairtrade natural organic certified you made what is it that sets the u s the this this organic certified  label what does it represent how does it sort of compare to these other labels well i think that's a very good question and it is complicated and i think people do get confused i think that if you're in vermont you're going to be looking for either the organic integrity that shows up so that organic seal especially the u s d a one actually is the most critical one for a consumer to be looking for when they go and buy a product we have these standards we have expectations about how farmers and rule ok that there's a federal law that was passed in fact our own senator leahy and then representative defiles iau of oregon were the two leading people in congress in one nine hundred ninety that wrote and and after much discussion passed the organic food production act so we have we have a law that came into play in one nine hundred ninety and then out once you write a law you then have to write the regulations and so the regulations were written and those regulations are what give us the rules that we have to follow as we begin to understand what was going on on the farms and that law at the same time it created the national organic standards board and i'm a member of that fifteen member board and that board is charged with looking at all those substances that can or cannot get added to in that five percent category are those good things to use those synthetics is it ok to use them it's only that national volunteer board that can put things on that list and so you've got the old organic law and the national organic program with the with the national granik programs regulations and then all the substance develop this in a with b board to really ride herd on these questions of substances and what would be approved practices and then so we have a body of regulations that have yet been developed  ninety or so certifying agencies right across the country and each of these agencies and the vermont organic farmers the o s which is part of know for vermont that the oas is one of those agencies and those agencies hire inspectors they're not employed by the agencies because they're third party inspectors and those inspectors people like myself go out to the farms and to the businesses and we verify our job is to verify the system and the substances so you know for around and look around you open cupboards even if the farmer or the process a didn't say you could go in that cupboard so you go in the company you look and see what they have in there have a legal document from the the company that they purchased the feed from exact and all the way back to the seed they rightly this trail of that legal paperwork exactly yeah all right so there's a specific documents called non g m o declaration for example so it for all of your seeds and for everything and that has to be signed and on file and you get inspected every single year everywhere in the world you get organic people get inspected once a year inspector doesn't make that determination of noncompliance we say oh you don't have the reco word for sure oh inglis what kind of compost you use or you don't have the record that shows us the certificate of the farm on which that those carrots were grown which we need a certificate because everybody gets a certificate for every any product that's being produced you don't have it so you write it down and then you send it back into the certifying agency and it's acidifying agency and their review board that determines whether or not it's a major noncompliance or just a minor record keeping issue that could so it might be you know just sort of a letter that says you know you've got a problem with this please fix it by market and an investigation takes place and then they may lose their certification unless they can or they may have to pay a fine and so the enforcement takes place by the at the federal level the federal inspectors will look at the materials or come out to the the business and verify that they've either improved and therefore they keep their certification or the fact they lose their sort of the case so it's a whole system of of creating an oversight sort of function at the local level and then actions are taken and chiron says yes and we also do residue testing that was in the original or one nine hundred ninety and they've only relatively recently really been pushing to encourage that to take place laboratory extract and then we would know whether or not there was really what was going on up towards a little bit about the board how it's structured and how it functions and ok there are fifteen volunteer members of the national guard extend repeating they're all volunteers the job takes about twelve hours a week twelve months of the year of time because you've got conference calls and written documents that you're dealing with all the time plus handling public input because not only are we a board that looks at all of these substances to determine if they should be used organic agriculture or not but we also we also have to take input from all the stakeholders across the nation so we like the we like the public receiving a body so we get public comments both in writing and verbally and then people will call us from all over the country with questions and tell us what it is that they want and don't want in terms of organic so we are very busy and try to build alliances and cooperation between very divergent stakeholders because of course organic has changed considerably since hundred ninety four a lot of a lot of stakeholders with different interests right and different scales very large companies are how organic foods now and smaller farmers right and i know from having attended meetings twice a year than anyone to be meets at some point place in the country and there's a three or four day meeting and tremendous public comment an input and just hashing things out really very real things and we only have one standard sort of speaks once size fits all and it is an uncomfortable mix in some ways it seems like over the years since the law was passed standards of or have been developed they're being about new ones are being implemented the gaps are being filled in terms of what needs to be included in the regulations and it's you know an organic agriculture was say it's the first principle is one of continual improvement yes so how yes what are some of the challenges that the board is facing what are some standards that will have to be addressed in the near term and longer term perhaps what are some challenges that well there's a number of things going on and large part it is because the industry is growing so fast the the farm bill was just recently passed and in that farm bill senator leahy through his work in the work of other the representative from michigan the detroit area played a major role has got everything they wanted in that farm bill for organic and that was really pretty impressive that means that for the first time the national guard program will get a large number of new staff and more money to do the things that need to be done to meet all the new demands on organic because one of the things that's happened over the last few years is that many of the recommendations that have come out of the national g haven't been able to carry them out because they haven't had the staff on the personnel to do the work so they have a backlog one of the backlogs is hydroponics the national got extended board made a recommendation a number of years ago that if it wasn't soil based that it could not be certified organic and that is still the feeling of the board and yet the n o p has done nothing about that because it hasn't had the time of the staff to actually further explore that clarify it and then put out the guidance that say you can't have using right nutrients a little just a water with lots of chemicals added to it and it does seem to violate that basic principle it does or it does yes being so against organic so that's an issue that is that's an issue that's bubbling and that should come up this year the asked to vote on substances at this last meeting and in the end they all went back to the subcommittee cuz we were unable to actually find out if anyone needed these that was one of the reasons plus the national going to program hasn't generated important considerations in approving any such yes practices is effect on the environment right and the point is made vigorously by environmental groups that you really as presently conducted this kind of open net fish farming is not good for the for the environ right and should not be allowed but with course we don't know what the rule is the new regulations are going to say so we really companies know that if they put organic product out there there is a growing number of of consumers who will buy it there's a price premium in the lark of place yes and so everyone would like to get as much or again a product as possible out there but the point gets made well you know sometimes you may not be able to have everything organic because you can't solve these right may not be able to solve these environmental problems for example so it's a real it's all right there it's a very complex issue and i i don't really know where it's going to go for organic aquaculture in the u s you know they have it in europe but it would be very interested want to follow you know one thing we haven't talked about and it's important for people to realize is of course a good deal of our organic foods and products come from elsewhere globally globally and so the question very good question is how do we know that those products even though they may bury us the a label how do we know that they've been produced in compliance with all of these standards so how does that i was getting a question well and the answer is in several ways so it may be that the fall in central america growing the coffee is in fact certified to the n o p standard and that someone like the california certifying agency goes down and they do the inspections so it's had that certifying agency seal and as well as the federal seal under the granik program but it could also be that they have a quibble and seize so for example we have the united states has equivalency agreements with with europe the european equivalency so we say that and that's been done on a memorandum of understanding that with a few exceptions that all of the products that are being certified to european standards meets a national ghana program so they can do is that they wouldn't be a label out yes and they can come into the country under equivalency we're having right now is that in the last eighteen months the national gannett program has made some radical changes to both policies and procedures that are followed and off under the organic food production  act these involve what's called sunset is one of the things where where by every five years we have to really look at all of the synthetic substances that are on the national list to determine if they should stay on the list or come off the list if they're a good replacement  of continual improvement yeah you're right you've made an allowance for about retiring but it's not forever right and so but the government has now made a change to say that things won't automatically fall off the list in five years but in fact they'll stay on the list and you have to vote to delist them instead of letting them sunset and then putting them back on if you think that there's no other replacement so this is a fairly major change which is causing a great deal of  nationwide by a wide range of groups of all levels and they've also taken all the policies and procedures which the the volunteer organic standards board would deal with and take public comment on they've taken those all back into the agency of and so that now we now the u s d a so therefore now we have no control over those either so so it's a time of day he is looking into this well you know we it's amazing how often we have occasion to give thanks that senator ensure that the original vision of the act and the integrity of the label are protected yes and he's also looking at hydroponics as well right now so the challenge at these annoys the meetings i sought from the very beginning was ok so you have large companies food companies that can send people to these meetings every year and really have a strong voice but smaller farm organizations like ours and others have difficulty attending these meetings and having a budget to do so so but but it's so critical that everybody shows up yeah i must say that anybody out there that's even vaguely interested in attending a meeting you should let someone know that you would like to go to the meeting  contact for example put them on to contact the vermont again excitement and shabby interest in going how do i go and because there are some organizations that will actually pave the way for smaller farm as or to go to the national what it is that their interests and concerns are if you have questions about certification organic standards or anything like this you can go to our web page you'll find actually you know the standards listed if you have