Organic aquaculture standards shouldn’t be fishy
Developing standards for USDA-certified organic aquaculture is proving to be a fishy business. Not all fish farms are created equal and can vary significantly in terms of pollution, escapes, and what the fish eat.
CLOSED VS. OPEN AQUACULTURE SYSTEMS
Some aquaculture systems are more easily adapted to organic production than others. Systems that are completely contained—where waste can easily be recovered, where rations are vegetarian and feed contamination is easily controlled—are the most adaptable to “organic” production.
Other systems, such as those for salmon, are not contained but are “open.” Pollution, infectious disease and fish escapes into the wild are not easily controlled or monitored in a standardized way. To complicate matters further, many of these “open” farmed fish need to eat wild-fish meal, which raises questions of sustainability, contamination with mercury, pesticides and PCBs; an unfortunate exception to the current requirement that all organic animals eat a 100% organic diet.
While herbivorous seafood such as shrimp, tilapia and catfish can be raised in closed systems and meet consumer expectations as well as organic principles of production, carnivorous fish raised in open net pen systems cannot. Consumers Union, along with more than 40 other environmental and consumer advocacy groups, believes that products meeting the tenets of organic production should be rewarded with organic eligibility. Where those principles can’t be met, products shouldn’t qualify for the coveted organic label.
ATTEMPTS TO LOWER ORGANIC STANDARDS
Some in the fishing industry want all farm-raised fish to be eligible for organic certification, arguing that limiting the scope of organic aquaculture will create a market barrier. They argue that lowering organic feed and pollution standards will create an incentive for producers to improve their practices over time. Without a lower standard, the organic aquaculture market won’t succeed, they contend.
However, those arguments should be treated with a great deal of caution. The organic market began quite small and selective, and it was based on strong organic principles. Only products that met high standards were rewarded with USDA’s organic label, which could legitimately carry a premium price for adding measurable value over conventional production. Now organic products have become one of the fastest growing sectors of the food industry.
In 2001 a similar attempt to weaken organic standards backfired. Fieldale Farms, a chicken producer, tried to gut the organic standards to allow less than 100% organic feed for livestock. That move was vociferously countered by several groups, including consumer advocates, farmers, the Organic Trade Association, and eventually even the U.S. Agriculture Secretary. They all agreed that anything less than 100% organic feed fell short of what organic means and what consumers expect. Thanks to congressional intervention, that loophole was overturned. We should not make the same mistake again.
WHAT CONSUMERS WANT
We also know that consumers are pretty smart. According to a Consumer Reports food labeling poll conducted last July, some 74% of consumers are concerned about environmental pollution from “organic” fish. The poll also showed that 91% of consumers want contaminants in fish to be absent or present only at very low levels. And consumers vote with their dollars for the products that are most valuable to them.
USDA’s National Organic Program is a marketing program designed to provide guarantees that producers have addressed consumers’ environmental and health concerns. To weaken the standards to allow more products to enter the market is a dangerous strategy that will backfire and weaken the integrity of the entire “organic” label. Consumers want to buy high quality products and not so-called “organic” seafood that has been sold down the river.
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By Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D., Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst for Consumers Union, and Director of GreenerChoices.org. This article first appeared in Food Traceability Report, January 2008. Copyright (c) Agra Informa, Inc., reprinted by permission, all rights reserved. For more information, go to www.foodtraceabilityreport.com
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