When can you label your produce as organic?
A common sight along the roadsides of Western North Carolina in the spring and summer is the roadside produce stand, where growers sell fresh produce directly from their fields and orchards. If you are a producer or handler of food products, especially produce, you may have wondered whether you may legally label or call your food products “100 percent organic,” “organic,” or “made with organic ingredients.”
In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act. The two main purposes of this law were to (1) establish national standards governing the marketing of certain agricultural products as organic and (2) to assure consumers that organically produced products meet a consistent standard. For the most part, you may only sell or label an agricultural product as organically produced if you produce and handle your product according to the Organic Foods Production Act.
Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part, to be sold or labeled as an organic product under the Organic Foods Production Act, the product must meet three criteria: (1) it must have been produced and handled without the use of synthetic chemicals, except for certain approved chemicals which appear on a “National List” created by the Secretary of Agriculture in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency; (2) except for livestock, it must not have been produced on any land to which any prohibited substances, including synthetic chemicals, have been applied during the three years immediately preceding the harvest of the agricultural products. Finally, (3) the product must be produced and handled in compliance with an organic plan agreed to by the producer and handler of the product and the certifying agent.
As with every law, there are exceptions. A production or handling operation that sells agricultural products as “organic” but whose gross agricultural income from organic sales totals $5,000 or less annually is exempt from the certification requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act. The producer or handler must still comply with the applicable organic production and handling requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act and the labeling requirements of the Act. The products from such operations may not be used as ingredients identified as “organic” in processed products produced by another handling operation.
If, for example, you sell “organic” apples from your orchard by the side of the road, and you sell $4,000 worth of apples per year, the certification requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act don’t apply to you. You may not call your products “certified organic” unless you have been formally certified under the Organic Foods Production Act. You may call your apples simply “organic.” However, if you do so, you must still produce and handle your apples in accordance with the Organic Foods Production Act.
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