NOSB Update: The Long and Winding Road
of Continuous Improvement

By Andrea Caroe


The most recent National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) gathering in Washington D.C. covered a wide range of important topics from commercial availability guidelines and grower group certification, to animal welfare and organic aquaculture standards. Many members of the organic community offered their public comment as the board deliberated and decided on many of the issues that will affect organic processors creating products for the U.S. market worldwide.

Certification and Compliance
The Certification Accreditation and Compliance Committee (CACC) shepherded some of the most difficult documents to the meeting. These included a rule change recommendation on standardized certificates, guidance on commercial availability, and lastly, the highly debated multi-site certification proposal.

Standardizing certificates. The organic regulation includes only a few requirements for the organic certification document, and thus each certifier uses a their own version. With 95 accredited certifiers working as agents of the USDA, it has become increasingly difficult to elicit pertinent information from these diverse documents. This has caused difficulty for buyers of these products, making it more challenging to ensure that the product they are purchasing is indeed covered under that certification. Likewise, the regulation does not require that the certificate even include the standard (EU, USDA, etc.) in which the product was certified, which can lead to confusion and quality control issues.

Certifiers testified that they were generally in favor of a standardized certificate, but cautioned the board against requirements that would be too restrictive. For these reasons, the CACC recommended a rule change that would require that specific relevant information appear on the certificate such as the name of the standard, brands used to represent the product and products certified. The board agreed with the recommendation and the vote passed.

Commercial availability. The National List 205.606 includes non-organic agricultural materials that are allowed in organic production when an organic form of the product is not “commercially available.” Although there are already rules in place for defining commercial availability, many of the real-life details like “who does what” were never clearly defined. With the recent addition of a significant number of materials to 205.606, it was imperative that the board establish a set of guidelines for operators using materials listed on 606 that clarifies exactly how they must justify that ingredients are not available as organic. The CACC’s guidelines, which were passed by the board, ensure that proper documentation of commercial availability is included in a company’s organic system plan, including test data and detailed results of efforts to find sources of ingredients. The guidelines also require documentation of proactive steps that the operator is taking to generate the organic form of unavailable ingredient including: research, funding or promotion to develop the ingredient in organic form, incentives or bonuses to crops in transition to organic, hiring of consultants to help promote and source organic material, or grower contracting. Lastly, these guidelines state that the NOP will be responsible for training certifiers on the criteria to use when granting the uses of non-organic agricultural ingredients.

The application of the commercial availability criteria also applies to growers that are using non-organic seed. In the original commercial availability recommendation, the committee included provisions for the requirements of sourcing organic seed as well as organic ingredients. However, during public comment, it became apparent that there is much more to consider in sourcing of seed as opposed to the sourcing of organic ingredients. The variability of seed varieties within a particular crop is complex. For this reason, the committee deleted the reference in the the commercial availability recommendation regarding seed sourcing. Organic seed availability will be the subject of another committee recommendation at a later date.

Multi-site certification. The last and most controversial subject tackled by the CACC was the application of certification for multi-site operations, also called “grower groups.” This recommendation outlined criteria for groups that wanted to apply for certification as a single entity and how the certifier should execute the certification. Included in the requirements is a robust management system that includes maintenance of a single management plan or ICS (Internal Control System). There were numerous comments received on this subject and while some comments strongly cautioned the board from instituting a policy that could be considered a weakening of the organic label, there were also quite a few comments that requested that the policy be available to accommodate the unique needs of small holders who would otherwise be unable to participate in organic certification. The committee agreed that the comments were significant and deemed it necessary to pull the item back to committee for further development.

Currently, certifiers are divided on this concept. Some feel that the NOP regulation prohibited anything but 100 percent on-site visits annually to all farm parcels and buildings. Others consider it well within the regulation to view these groups as a single entity and thus perform an annual site visit to that “operation” which includes a review of the ICS management along with verification of a sample of parcels or buildings within that operation. Until this issue is resolved, there will continue to be a diverse application of the regulation.

Be Kind to Animals
Two presentations were given to the board during the meeting on the need for improved standards related to the care and welfare of animals. At this time, the standard has only vague provisions for proper treatment.

First, Kathleen Merrigan and Willie Lockeretz from Tufts University gave the board some insight on simple items that could be added to the organic standard right now that would help promote proper care and treatment of production animals including provisions such as perches for laying hens. Merrigan referred to these added provisions as the “low hanging fruit.” Since these provisions give detail to the already present rule requirements, there is no need for lengthy economic impact analysis that often accompanies rule making

The next presentation was made by Margaret Wittenberg, global vice president of quality standards and public affairs at Whole Foods Market. Wittenberg informed the board about a project started by Whole Foods to rank livestock producers’ efforts to promote humane treatment of their animals. The Five-Step program rates animal production systems on a scale of 1 to 5, on a species-specific basis, with each step building upon the standards required for the step previous to it. This was intended to create a framework for improvement while also giving recognition to farmers for their efforts and providing the consumer with transparency. This program is available to all retailers in an effort to give preference and market incentives to livestock operations that implement high care standards.

This information was provided as a new area that the board may consider for future actions. The Livestock Committee will consider these proposals and potentially develop recommendations that would add regulatory requirements or guidance to the existing rule.

Defining Terms
The Handling and Materials Committees once again took up the age-old questions: “What is synthetic and what is agricultural?” Recent expansion of organic production to unique food items such as yeast has highlighted the need to answer these basic questions. What life forms are included in agriculture? At what point does a material that has its origin as a plant or an animal, lose its ability to be considered agricultural? Isn’t petroleum the compressed decomposed remains of ancient plants? Is this agricultural? Is it non-synthetic? If not, when did it cross those barriers?

These questions become fundamental to the organic standard in its application. Organic products can only use a non-agricultural ingredient if it’s listed on the National List 205.605. A non-organic agricultural material can only be used if it’s on the National List 205.606 and is not commercially available in an organic form. Also, if a feed ingredient is agricultural it must be organic. If the feed ingredient is a non-agricultural supplement then it does not have to be organic.

The result of many sleepless nights and mind-numbing conference calls was countless drafts of decision trees and graphic depictions of the issue. As much as these committees tried, they were unable to perfect the recommendation for this board meeting. For this reason, the item was left for discussion. And discuss we did! Many offered their version of the solution and even more decision trees. Clearly this is the Mt. Everest of recommendations.

The industry was quite sympathetic to the task at hand and rumor has it that a group of the best and brightest is forming to work on the issue and provide the board with guidance on this. The committees will continue to work on the recommendation with the sincere hope of presenting a document at the spring meeting.

National List Considerations
During the Handling Committee portion of the board meeting, time was allowed for the possible reconsideration of gellan gum. This substance was considered by the board in the last vote of a very long meeting in the spring and voted not to be allowed for inclusion to the list of allowed non-organic agricultural materials.

Since that meeting, several factors on this material surfaced. First, several members were not present for the vote last spring since the meeting was running long and travel arrangements did not accommodate a late departure. Even though we still had a quorum and could act, we were missing the expertise of four of our members. Also, many members were unsure of whether the material was being considered for inclusion as a synthetic or non-synthetic material and therefore it was unclear which criteria to apply. Because of the confusion around the substance, it was decided to allow members that voted against the material an opportunity to motion for reconsideration if they were so inclined.

Indeed, the motion was made for reconsideration of gellan gum. After an active discussion on the material, the board re-voted on the material for inclusion on 205.606 of the National List as an allowed non-organic agricultural material. The material was recommended by a unanimous vote.

The only other petition that the Handling Committee considered was for the addition of grape seed extract to 205.606 as a non-organic agricultural material, however, it was not recommended to be added to the list. Also, several handling materials were considered for continuation of listing through the sunset process including agar agar, animal enzymes, calcium sulfate, carrageenan, glucono-delta lactone and cellulose. All these materials were recommended for continuation as listed.

Closing Note
During the meeting, Barbara Robinson from the NOP entertained us with an audio greeting card. The card delivered a monolog from Gilda Radner’s character Roseanne Roseanna Dana. Roseanna delivered a long litany of complaints that ranged from her feet hurting to a problem with gas. Is this an expression of the programs’ state of mind in a resource stretched government program? Or perhaps this is a metaphor for the NOP and NOSB. It seems like we are always dealing with a critical issue that has us spinning. We have lived through some vital issues such as the first sunset review, the ramifications of the Harvey lawsuit court order, and now the definition of critical terms. We always think that all we have to do is get through it and we will be OK. However, with growth like we are experiencing within the organic industry, there will always be new challenges and more difficult decisions to make. As Roseanne Roseanna Dana said at the end of her commentary, “it’s always somethin’!” The important thing to remember is that each of these challenges is an opportunity to strengthen our integrity and bring the organic movement to the next level.

Andrea Caroe is the former NOSB chairperson as well as the executive director of Protected Harvest, a non-profit organization that independently certifies farmers’ use of stringent crop and region-specific environmental growing standards. She can be reached at andrea@protectedharvest.org.