Organic Processing Vol.9 #1 - January/February 2012

My Fair Valentine:
New Socially
Responsible Candy
and Cards

This year, Equal Exchange has created fun, fair trade and organic valentines for kids to give away to friends and classmates on Valentine’s Day. These kits come with 24 bite-size, individually wrapped fair trade, organic certified dark chocolates and 24 illustrated cards printed on recycled paper. The shipper converts into a display case for retail stores, schools and other organizations. Families may also purchase individual kits at retail prices from Equal Exchange’s online store, shop.EqualExchange.coop. Individual kits will retail for $10, and cases of five kits will wholesale for $35. Households, organizations and businesses can sign up at tinyurl.com/7wgmbqm to be reminded in January to place their orders.

Five New Appointees Join NOSB in 2012

The USDA appointed five new members to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) for five-year terms beginning in January 2012.

Harold V. Austin, IV, the director of orchard administration for Zirkle Fruit Company, an organic tree fruit grower and shipper, will represent handlers.

Carmela Beck, the National
Organic
Program
supervisor and organic certi-
fication grower liaison for
Driscoll’s, an organic berry
producer, will represent
produc-
ers. The
environ-
mentalist seat will go to
Tracy Favre, the chief oper-
ating officer for Holistic
Management International,
an international nonprofit
group (continues on page 11)
Beck Austin Favre

NOSB Fall 2011 Meeting Report

By Gwendolyn Wyard, OTA

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) held its fall public meeting in Savannah, GA, Nov. 29 – Dec. 2, 2011. In step with past meetings, public testimony and NOSB discussions were lively and informative, representing a broad spectrum of viewpoints across the organic sector. Topics of particular interest to the organic processing community that drew in a large majority of the public comments included the petition to allow added sulfur dioxide in wine labeled as “organic,” and petitions to add arachidonic acid (ARA) fungal oil and docosahexaenoic (DHA) algal oil to the National List for use as nutrients in organic certified products. NOSB also voted to amend the annotation for chlorine materials used in food handling, and voted on a number of other processing materials that were either petitioned or up for “sunset” review.

Sulfur Dioxide Used in Wine. Comments on this much-debated
issue fell largely into two camps. Those who supported the petition
argued that changing the annotation to allow wines made with or-
ganic grapes that contain added sulfur dioxide to be la-
beled “USDA Organic” (rather than just “made with
organic grapes”) would reduce consumer confusion
around organic wine labels, improve producers’ ability
to communicate that organic wine consists of all organic
grapes and facilitate the growth of acreage dedi-
cated to organic wine production. By contrast,
those opposing the petition indicated that the
current guidelines for organic wine are well un-
derstood by consumers, and that changing
them would create unnecessary confusion. Sev-
eral of the petition’s opponents claimed that sulfites have negative impacts
on human health and are not essential to organic wine production (and
therefore do not meet the criteria for inclusion on the National List). The
majority of the NOSB voted to reject the petition. Therefore, sulfur diox-
ide will continue to be allowed only in wine labeled “made with organic
grapes,” provided total sulfite concentration does not exceed 100 ppm.

DHA & ARA. Over the course of the meeting, both DHA and ARA, ingredients that are added to boost functional health benefits, underwent intense review as NOSB worked to determine their appropriateness in organic foods. The discussions revolved around four main points: 1) the essentiality of the nutrients; 2) the methods used to extract the nutrients, namely enzymatic vs. hexane extraction; 3) the “other ingredients” that are added during the processing of DHA & ARA and remain as incidental additives when added to an organic product; and 4) the GMO status of DHA & ARA.