Food: Canadian Organic Products Regulation

[Explor­ing Life] The Cana­dian Organic Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­tions were first pub­lished in Decem­ber of 2006. The reg­u­la­tions come into full force on June 20, 2009. The reg­u­la­tions estab­lish a con­sis­tent and reli­able set of stan­dards that legally require organic prod­ucts to meet a clear set of stan­dards. For con­sumers the reg­u­la­tions clearly define what con­sti­tutes an organic food prod­uct.

Canada Organic Logo

The Organ­ics Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­tions estab­lish min­i­mum require­ments for an organic prod­uct to be branded with the Canada Organic logo. The best prod­uct is one that car­ries the logo and car­ries the dis­tinc­tion of 100% organic. To dis­play the logo a prod­uct must have a min­i­mum organic con­tent of 95% or greater; any­thing less than 95% organic con­tent will not be per­mit­ted to dis­play the logo. This means, how­ever, that up to 5% of the food con­tent can be non-organic. If the prod­uct con­tains 70%-95% organic con­tent it may dis­play the per­cent­age of organic con­tent on its pack­ag­ing (but may not use the logo). Imported prod­ucts may dis­play the logo if they meet the 95% require­ment, but must also dis­play the orig­i­nal prod­uct of origin.[1]

Enforce­ment

Enforce­ment of the Organic Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­tions are the respon­si­bil­ity of the Cana­dian Food Inspec­tion Agency (CFIA). The essen­tial task of the CFIA is to ensure com­pli­ance in organic food pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion accord­ing to this basic principle:

Foods and other agri­cul­tural prod­ucts shall refer to organic pro­duc­tion meth­ods only if they come from a farm sys­tem employ­ing man­age­ment prac­tices that seek to nur­ture ecosys­tems in order to achieve sus­tain­able pro­duc­tiv­ity; and that pro­vide weed, pest and dis­ease con­trol through enhance­ment of bio­di­ver­sity, recy­cling of plant and ani­mal residues, crop selec­tion and rota­tion, water man­age­ment, tillage and cul­ti­va­tion. (Organic Pro­duc­tion Sys­tems Gen­eral Prin­ci­ples and Man­age­ment Stan­dards: Cana­dian Gen­eral Stan­dards Board)

Essen­tially, the CFIA is respon­si­ble for inspect­ing the farm where the food has been pro­duced. The qual­ity of the Canada Organic logo is there­fore com­pletely depen­dent upon the qual­ity of inspection.

Organic Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and GMO

GMO (genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms) are not per­mit­ted in a cer­ti­fied organic prod­uct. It is obvi­ous that GMO should be com­pletely banned from a cer­ti­fied organic product.

A GMO is “an organ­ism that has been mod­i­fied by the inser­tion of DNA by human inten­tion. It is usu­ally DNA which has been mod­i­fied or ‘engi­neered’ to suit a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose (recom­bi­nant DNA is the same thing). The DNA can be from a for­eign organ­ism, from the same organ­ism or it may be a sequence syn­the­sized in a lab­o­ra­tory.” (Lynn M. Hartweek, Ph.D., Agron­omy Depart­ment, Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, May 1997)[2]

An organic prod­uct is a nat­ural, pure and whole prod­uct. A GMO is an unnat­ural, impure, and engi­neered prod­uct. The long-term health affects of GMO prod­ucts are unknown.[3]

Nat­ural and Pure Food Sources

A nat­ural food is not nec­es­sar­ily organic, but usu­ally indi­cates that the food is free from arti­fi­cial addi­tives. The term “nat­ural” is not reg­u­lated and there­fore there is no stan­dard of enforce­ment. A nat­ural food may orig­i­nate from a GMO source.

Foods or ingre­di­ents of foods sub­mit­ted to processes that have sig­nif­i­cantly altered their orig­i­nal phys­i­cal, chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal state should not be described as “nat­ural”. This includes such changes as the removal of caffeine.

• A nat­ural food or ingre­di­ent of a food is not expected to con­tain, or to ever have con­tained, an added vit­a­min, min­eral nutri­ent, arti­fi­cial flavour­ing agent or food additive.
• A nat­ural food or ingre­di­ent of a food does not have any con­stituent or frac­tion thereof removed or sig­nif­i­cantly changed, except the removal of water.

(CFIA: 4.7 Nature, Nat­ural)

A pure food is also not nec­es­sar­ily organic and is not reg­u­lated. The CFIA does rec­om­mend that:

The term “pure” should not be used on the labels of, or in con­nec­tion with, an arti­cle of food that is a com­pound, mix­ture, imi­ta­tion or sub­sti­tute. This pro­hi­bi­tion appeared in the Food and Drugs Act before 1952. Although no such reg­u­la­tion exists today, con­sumers still expect a food described as “pure” or “100% pure” to be uncon­t­a­m­i­nated and unadul­ter­ated, and to con­tain only sub­stances or ingre­di­ents that are under­stood to be part of the food so described. CFIA: 4.10 Pure, 100% Pure, 100%, All

Sort­ing through the mean­ing of “nat­ural” and “pure” is obvi­ously immersed in con­fu­sion and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. For the con­sumer a food prod­uct labeled as nat­ural or pure should be con­sid­ered meaningless.

The Need For Transparency

There is an obvi­ous lack of trans­parency in the pre­cise mean­ing of many food labels. Though the CFIA seems to make an effort to qual­ify the labels used by food man­u­fac­tur­ers, this is of lit­tle help to con­sumers. How many of us have the time to exam­ine the minu­tiae of gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions that are shrouded in con­fused and con­vo­luted writ­ing? If food is a vitally impor­tant issue to all of us, and it is, then why are our edu­ca­tion sys­tems silent on the issue? The term “Canada Organic” does offer some hope for the future since there are clear stan­dards that can be eas­ily com­mu­ni­cated to con­sumers. It remains to be seen, how­ever, if the enforce­ment tech­niques lead to the cre­ation of trust and con­fi­dence in the logo.

Foot­notes

1. See Organ­ics Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­tions: Label­ing and Adver­tis­ing
2. Quote via Organic Trade Asso­ci­a­tion
3. A good sum­mary of organic vs. GMO food sources is An Alter­na­tive to Genetic Engi­neer­ing in Agriculture