EU agricultural ministers agreed on a mandatory labeling (logo) regime for organic food, which replaces a previous voluntary labeling scheme adopted in 1991. (See Financial Times, Fears EU Logo Sets Organic Standards Too Low, June 13, 2007, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b0694860-194b-11dc-a961-000b5df10621.html.)
This new regime is slated to take effect in 2009, while the catering industry is exempt until 2011. National and other industry logos which are usually more stringent than this rule will coexist with it. To be classified as organic, food must contain 95 percent "organic ingredients." But, the thorny issue is how much this new scheme should tolerate inorganic ingredients, especially genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The current proposal allows GMOs up to 0.9 percent. Environmentalists argue that the bar should be lowered to 0.1 percent.
This new EU logo on organic food raises several legal and political issues, which may warrant further attention and discussion.
First, is it an SPS or TBT measure? It could be a "technical regulation" under TBT because it aims to protect human health and/or consumers, and it is mandatory. It might be an SPS measure because at least part of the measure is to protect human health from risks arising from the entry, establishment or spread of "additives, contaminants, toxins or disease-causing organisms in foods," to which one might say GMOs belong.
Second, is it protectionism in a different name? The EU farm commissioner reportedly said that "organic food is a successful and growing market and I hope that this new set of rules will provide the framework to allow this growth to continue - through a combination of market demand and the entrepreneurship of European farmers."
Third, how organic is organic? This organic-ness has been hotly debated in the U.S. Would U.S. farmers be hit negatively by this rule? How about African farmers? Is this a new window of opportunity for African farmers? (Of course, it depends whether African food is organic under the EU standard.)
Fourth, would this rule’s purpose (nurturing the EU’s organic food industry) be undermined as GM technology further develops? Suppose that we can now harvest cancer-fighting tomatoes thanks to a new biotechnology. These tomatoes may not be organic in a technical sense because of their heavy reliance on GMOs. But, even conservative European farmers would jump to this Frankenstein, perhaps Pygmalion, food.
