January 24, 2025
Jennifer Tucker, deputy administrator for the USDA’s National Organic Program, lauded organic certifiers, brokers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents for helping successfully implement the program’s Strengthening Organic Enforcement rules.
Speaking at the Organic Grower Summit in Monterey, Calif., in December, Tucker said the rules, which were instituted last March, are being implemented under a regulatory framework that “is fundamentally decentralized and private sector driven.”
“Everybody has to be part of the solution,” Tucker said. “Everybody has got to be part of the game, moving the ball down the field.” And, she said, “certifiers deserve a tremendous amount of credit for that work.”
“We have, from our perspective, effectively closed the certification loopholes that have really plagued our ability to protect the organic market effectively,” she said.
Brokers, meanwhile, she characterized as the National Organic Program’s “new frontline on protecting the seal.”
“They are actively turning back product that doesn’t have an import certificate,” she said. “They are either turning it away … or they will code it in the system as a product that cannot be sold as organic. And we now have procedures to follow up on that to make sure that product did not enter the organic market here in the United States.”
Also regarding imports, Tucker said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents “have been tremendously helpful in pursuing trademark violation cases for us. They will hold product and if it’s not certified, they will turn it back.”
Tucker said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection works closely with the USDA’s National Organic Program with identifying ports and commodities of concern and for a block of time, when one of the commodities comes through one of the ports, the border protection agents may put an automatic hold on the commodity until the agency can come in and do testing.
“And so that takes a lot of calibration to make sure that we have somebody on site ready to grab the samples at the same time that they are exercising one of those holds,” she said.
Tucker added that the agency plans to continue with those types of enforcement and surveillance activities in an effort to further decrease the percentage of invalid certificates that are getting into the U.S. organic marketplace, a percentage that has been reduced to just 5 percent since the implementation of the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rules.
95% compliance
Tucker noted that since March 2024, when the rules went into their compliance phase, more than 126,000 import certificates have been generated out of the Organic Integrity database, which is the definitive source of NOP import certificates. Of those, she said, about half have been converted into actual imports, and about 95% of those have a valid NOP import certificate. That is up from about an 86% match just nine months ago, she said.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Tucker said. “After nine months, we have a 95% compliance rate.”
About 65 percent of those imports, she added, are coming into the U.S. from U.S. certified operations, and 35 percent of those are coming in under equivalence arrangements, which the U.S. has with Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and a couple of other countries. These are facts the USDA didn’t have at its disposal last year, prior to the implementation of the SOE.
She added that six of the top ten imports are coming in from three countries: Mexico, Canada and Peru. Knowing that, she said, has helped the agency know where to focus its audits and investigations.
“So, for example, we have an audit team that was in Peru for about three-and-a-half weeks this past year overseeing the work happening there, (including) visiting operations, looking at certifiers,” Tucker said.
Tucker, who is a career senior executive and not a political appointee, said she doesn’t expect to see major changes in the way the USDA regulates organic agriculture under the new administration, but couldn’t say for sure whether some changes might occur.
“There are changes that can happen at the beginning of an administration or as an administration unfolds, but our main mission will continue to be to uphold the Organic Foods Production Act and the regulations. That stays the same under any administration,” Tucker said.
“Organic tends to be supported by both sides of the aisle,” Tucker added. “We will continue to pursue our mission under the Organic Foods Production Act and the USDA organic regulations, and look forward to briefing the new team.”
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