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Organic food, USDA orders new testing

The US Department of Agriculture Friday said that periodic residue testing will begin next year on organic food in an effort to ensure producers are not using prohibited pesticides, genetically modified organisms or other substances.

Only a small number of private, USDA-accredited testing agencies have been performing routine testing on farms since the USDA first implemented regulations governing organic food production in 2002 and that’s because there is little guidance in the regulations covering why and when testing should be performed.

Organic food producers must get an initial inspection before being certified to produce organic food, according to USDA regulations in place now, but no periodic testing is mandated, despite demands from Congress when it approved a law in 1990 that ordered the creation of organic standards. It took the USDA 12 yrs to craft the regulation to implement the 1990 law.

There are only 93 accredited agents to perform residue testing and that’s not nearly enough to perform yearly tests on each of the roughly 30,000 organic food producers worldwide that sell in the US, so the USDA said it is mandating that agents test a minimum of 5% of the farms or production facilities they are contracted to monitor.

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It will be up to the private agents which of the 5% will be tested each year, according to the USDA. The USDA said it will not specify which places must be tested in order to reduce costs and to provide flexibility to the testing agents.

“Certifying agents are knowledgeable about the risk factors affecting the operations it certifies,” USDA said, ” therefore, it is appropriate for a certifying agent to determine what operations should be tested under this action.”

The USDA said the new testing requirements will protect the integrity of the organic food industry. Periodic residue testing, the agency said, will discourage the mislabeling of organic food that consumers buy in supermarkets.

It was an audit performed by the USDA’s inspector general that the USDA said prompted its decision to mandate periodic testing. Auditors interviewed four of the agents that monitor organic food producers in the US and found that none of the agents was conducting periodic testing.

Organic standards in the US are contained in a complex set of regulations that are different for different products, but ban the use of many pesticides and other synthetic substances like arsenic.

Genetically modified organisms GMO are used to produce most of the Corn and Soybean grown in the US, organic farmers are not allowed to use them.

The Organic Trade Association, a group representing organic food producers in the US and Canada, said Friday it was pleased with the new USDA rule.

“This additional testing will help certifying agents identify and take enforcement action against farms and businesses intentionally using prohibited substances or methods,” the group said in a statement.