The New Enforcement Regime
When Canada’s Organic Products Regulations came into force on
June 30, 2009, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) provided
the sector with a Stream of Commerce and Enforcement Policy. Spearheaded by COTA and key partner groups in the sector, the policy’s objective was to provide domestic operators and importers time to make
the adjustments necessary for full compliance to Canada’s new law.
The policy allowed products and ingredients in the current supply
chain to “flow through” the marketplace and gave companies time to
use existing non-compliant packaging so that it was not wasted.
Since 2009, CFIA has taken enforcement action only on fraudulent or misleading claims;
other minor non-compliances have been
managed through notification
and education toward correction. CFIA is a government
agency with an extensive jurisdiction over crops, consumer
protection and food safety.
Don’t
Forget This
When Crossing
The
Border!
CFIA’s national inspectors
have broad powers of review,
approval or seizure, and can
take a number of enforcement
or corrective actions, including
detaining non-compliant products and removing them from
store shelves, removing products with non-compliant labeling, and barring entry to or
returning non-compliant products to the country of origin.
Products that are traded between Canada and the United
For the purposes of customs
entry, monitoring and enforce-
ment, as well as certification
and accreditation audits, the
following statement must ap-
pear on documentation travel-
ing with shipments of organic
products traded across the bor-
der any date after June 30, 2011:
“Certified in compliance with
the terms of the
US-Canada Organic
Equivalency Arrangement”
States and covered by the
world’s first organic equivalency arrangement are also
now subject to the expiration of the Stream of Commerce terms and
to mandatory compliance to CFIA’s rules for organic food and livestock products.
Enforcement actions could now be taken on NOP certified products if they:
• do not indicate they meet the terms of the equivalency arrange-
ment
• claim “Certified Organic” or “100 Percent Organic” on their front-
label panels rather than simply “Organic”
• do not include the word “Biologique” alongside “Organic”
• make other claims not permitted by Canada’s Organic Products
Regulations (more details on these claims on page 25).
(Note: Personal care, natural health, textiles, aquaculture and some
other non-regulated products may still make verifiable and truthful organic claims under voluntary, national or industry standards but are
not eligible to carry the “Canada Organic” logo.)
Understanding the Equivalency
Arrangement
The U.S.-Canada Organic Equivalency Arrangement states that products certified to one of the two
national organic systems and the additional terms of the arrangement do
not need to be certified to the other
country’s standards, though they
must still meet all labeling rules of
the destination country.
By now, many are aware of the
four variances identified in the agreement, which provide the basic terms
that must be met in order to be
traded through this arrangement: For
Canadian products sold to the U.S.,
they must not include ingredients
from dairy cows ever treated with antibiotics. For U.S. products moving to
Canada, they must have been grown
without the use of sodium “Chilean”
nitrate, cannot have come from hydroponic or aeroponic production
methods, and must meet the specific
Canadian livestock densities identified in Canada’s organic standards.
What is interesting about the
equivalency arrangement is that it
brings the two standards together in a
way that is novel in the organic world:
as each undergoes its natural cycle of
review, adjustment and renewal, the
other standard and the equivalency
agreement also come to bear in these
considerations. In light of this trade
relationship, proposals for changes to
the Canadian standards have identified some U.S. practices for consideration including limited parallel
production. The recent Pasture Rule
in the U.S., meanwhile, and the
NOSB recommendations this past
April on phasing out the use of
sodium nitrate by 2013 are also having the effect of incrementally bringing the two systems closer together.
This sort of convergence in the
standards shows that the model of
equivalence works; allowing each jurisdiction to recognize its distinct
needs, stakeholders and climactic
