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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The draft laws for organic foods, if cleared, will adversely affect small farmers -Chandra Bhushan

The draft laws for organic foods, if cleared, will adversely affect small farmers -Chandra Bhushan

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published Published on Jul 20, 2017   modified Modified on Jul 20, 2017
-Hindustan Times

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s new certification regulation is going to hinder the growth of the sector. Instead of targeting small farmers, why not make laws that require mandatory labelling of foods grown with pesticides, chemicals or GMO etc?

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently announced the Draft Food and Standards (Organic Food) Regulations, 2017, aimed at curbing sale of fake organic products. This regulation will require products sold in the market as “organic” to be certified by either the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) of the commerce and industry ministry, or the Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS) of the agriculture ministry.

The NPOP was designed for the export market and involves third-party companies, which verify organic status, while in PGS, a collective of farmers guarantee that everyone in the group is practicing organic farming. The draft, however, exempts ‘unprocessed’ organic food sold directly by farmers or farmer organisations to consumers.

On the face of it, this looks like an excellent regulation, with a promise of protecting consumers’ rights. But an analysis shows that it cannot curb sales of fake organic products, and it might do more harm than good to the organic farming movement in India.

The demand for a regulation on organics itself is suspect, as it is led by the Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI), which represents pesticide companies. In December 2014, CCFI released a report, prepared by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), on pesticides in organic vegetables from Delhi. Interestingly, IARI has not made this report public.

The institute tested 150 vegetable samples from one organic store in Delhi and found traces in 50; in 10 of these, the levels were above the maximum residue limit (MRL). The store identified a certified farm in Sonipat as the source of the vegetables. The farm was certified by one of the largest NPOP certifiers.

To begin with, sampling from one store from one city is scientifically untenable. Second, finding small traces of pesticides in organic vegetables is not surprising because pesticides are present in water and air, and will find their way into a produce even if the farmer is practicing organic farming. This is why many countries prescribe a tolerance limit for presence of pesticides in organic products. Third, the 10 samples in which levels exceeded the MRL were sourced from a certified farm – which means certification cannot be an answer to the problem.

Let us accept that fake organic products do exist. But the scale is difficult to ascertain till we have a pan-India study on it. Second, a fake organic product is not a safety concern; it is an issue of ‘misbranding’ or ‘misleading advertisement’. Fake products can be as safe or unsafe as any other products sold in markets. So the question is: Is certification required to tackle misbranding?

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Hindustan Times, 19 July, 2017, http://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-draft-laws-for-organic-foods-if-cleared-will-adversely-affect-small-farmers/story-r2PN2ZAmz4t5Br6qdfVBIN.html


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