> Compulsory certification is bad for many reasons:
If you mean to use the word 'Organic'
The word ORGANIC is only alowed to be used by CERTIFIED
growers/farmers in Europe.
There are lots of farmers working organic but not certified, they
cannot use the word Organic, or the national equivalent of the word.
>
> It is inconsistent with the needs of CSA operations and local consumption
> preferences in general;
If you know your farmer/consumer this works fine.
> It drives costs up unnecessarily for many long time, truly organic farmers
> incapable of covering those costs;
There should be some subsidising from the government.
conventional farmers let the environment and later generations pay
for there way of producing.
> It is prohibitive of the right to free speech and to offer one's product to
> the public of one's choice on the basis of it's own merits;
You can still say that yyour produce is grown organicly but you can't
prove it.
>
> There are alternative and depending on the circumstances, frequently
> preferable methods of determining whether a given product complies with the
> standard;
someone has to check it and someone has to pay for checking the
farms/products
> It is a measure designed to provide unwarranted and unearned advantages to the
> certifier and/or distributor rather than the farmer and/or consumer, and this
> explains the push the measure has received from certain quarters;
The certifier has to be independant in the way they work from the
government but dependent from international organic rules.
> Certification is a matter that's best left to be determined by buyers and
> sellers of organic products. It will be indicated in many if not most
> instances, but inappropriate to others;
I would't trust market driven certifiers.
>
> The dangers of compulsory certification under the control of a single
> governmental agency were amply demonstrated when the word "organic" came all
> too close to legally meaning things it has NEVER been meant to mean by any
> serious and dedicated participant, due to the excessive powers granted to
> government and their "sweethearts" by OFPA;
Countries like Germany, brittain, belgium have more than one
organisation for certification. The Netherlands only have one.
All EU certifiers use the same rules.
Frits v/d Laan
Biologische boomkwekerij/
Organic horticulture
Gouda - Netherlands
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/F.vd.Laan/
f.vd.laan@inter.nl.net
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