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Regulators and
regulations: USA
Although the US Congress passed the 'Organic Foods Production Act'
(OFPA) in 1990 which required the US Department of Agriculture
to develop national standards for organically produced agricultural products,
the so-called National Organic Programme (NOP) was not published and
approved until 2001.
Basically the OFPA
and the NOP regulations require that agricultural products labeled as
organic originate from farms or handling operations certified by a State or
private entity that has been accredited by USDA. The NOP rule is split into
several sections:
Certification standards establish the requirements that organic
production and handling operations must meet to become accredited by
USDA-accredited certifying agents. Farms and handling operations that sell
less than $5,000 a year in organic agricultural products are exempt from
certification. They may label their products organic if they abide by the
standards, but they cannot display the USDA Organic Seal. Retail operations,
such as grocery stores and restaurants, do not have to be certified.
Accreditation standards establish the requirements an
applicant must meet in order to become a USDA-accredited certifying agent.
The standards are designed to ensure that all organic certifying agents act
consistently and impartially. Only the USDA can directly approve
certification bodies. However, the USDA can recognise a foreign government
system conformity assessment system as sufficient to supervise foreign
certification bodies implementing the NOP standard.
Following an announcement by the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on July 28, 2009
those CBs outside of
Canada or the USA who currently have both NOP and COR accreditation are now
able to reduce this to one accreditation. This is a major step
forward in reducing the burden of approval by separate countries on organic
certifiers.
Go to the
NOP web site.
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