Update: USDA Postpones Changes in Organic Certification!

In a recent post titled “The End of Organic Coffee?” we told you about a USDA ruling that threatened to squeeze hundreds of thousands of small-scale family farmers out of the U.S. organic coffee market and dramatically reduce the amount of certified organic coffee available to consumers here in the United States. 

Good news!  The USDA just issued a statement announcing that the “no enforcement action will be taken by the Program related to grower group certification” in the coming months.  The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will review the issue again this fall after more intensive consultation with stakeholders.  Meanwhile, the USDA has authorized its certifying agents to continue to use the 2002 recommendation on grower group certification in its dealings with smallholder cooperatives.

This is welcome news for small-scale farmers worldwide — including many thousands of farmers who belong to Fair Trade cooperatives – who are selling their produce into the U.S. organic market.  The USDA announcement came after an extraordinary response from industry groups, consumer advocates and NGO allies of small-scale farmers.  The National Organic Council and Fair Trade pioneer Equal Exchange were two of the most notable leaders in the grassroots response to the ruling.  Equal’s Executive Director Rob Everts, in thanking those who supported the online petition, writes:

“We had asked that you sign on to a letter we and our allies had drafted and that we were going to deliver in person to officials at the USDA. Because so many of you took action–and shared the message with others–in less than a week 3,150 individuals and 450 organizations signed on to the letter. This was a much, much more powerful response than we had dared hoped for and we thank you.”

CRS will remain engaged in the process to see what the NOSB decides when it revisits this issue this fall, and to determine what we might do to help secure a permanent solution.  Meantime, CRS applauds this decision on behalf of the small-scale farmers we accompany overseas and the organic consumers we serve here in the United States!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 and is filed under Certification, Coffee, Fair Trade, Organics . Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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