Testimony of Margaret Laggis

Testimony of Margaret Laggis, CropLife America Lobbyist to Senate Agriculture Committee January 26, 2005

I'm going to read you a couple of things because Ed did bring up the National Organic Standards. They are available on the web, and they are very clear, and they discuss several times the issue of GMO drift or GE drift in the National Organic Standards. And the first thing to remember is that organic labeling is a process based program, which means that as long as the organic farmer follows his certification plan, his crops are deemed organic, and he is deemed to be in compliance with his organic certificate, and I don't think we really want to go down the road of getting into a lot of testing of organic products, and I'll read you an article or show you an article a little bit later about why I think that's a really bad idea, mostly for organic farmers, um, but anyway, the genetic drift issue, it's in the clarifications preamble of the National Organic Standards, and it states very clearly, drift has been a difficult issue for organic producers from the beginning.

Organic operations have always had to worry about the potential for drift from neighboring operations, particularly drift of synthetic chemical pesticides, which are not allowed to be used in organic farming. As the number of organic farms increases, so does the potential for conflict between organic and non-organic operations. It has always been the responsibility of organic operations to manage potential contact of organic products with other substances not approved for use with organic production systems, whether from the non-organic portion of a split operation or from neighboring farms. The organic system plan must outline steps that the organic operation will take to avoid this type of unintentional contact. When we are considering drift issues, it is particularly important to remember that the organic standards are process based. Certifying agents attest to the ability of organic operations to follow a set of production standards and practices that meet the requirements of the act and the regulations. This regulation prohibits the use of excluded methods in organic operations. The presence of a detectable residue of a product of excluded methods alone does not necessarily constitute a violation of this regulation. As long as an organic operation has not used excluded methods and takes reasonable steps to avoid contact with the products of excluded methods, as detailed in their approved organic system plan, the unintentional presence of the products of excluded methods should not affect the status of an organic operation or product.

Issues of pollen drift are also not confined to the world of organic agriculture. For example, plant breeders and seed companies must ensure genetic identity of plant varieties by minimizing any cross-pollination that might result from pollen drift, and it kinda goes on, and what I'm talking about is if I grow sweet corn, I gotta be careful about my cow corn that's growing in the field next door because it's going to cross-pollinate, and it's going to affect my sweet corn. It's my responsibility if I'm trying to grow a crop that I want to protect the identity of, if I want to keep it sweet corn and not cross with the cow corn, it's my responsibility to protect the identity, and it's always been that way, and it's not just the organic farmers that do that.

Um and the second thing and when I talk about let's not go down the road of testing, they did some random testing in Britain, at the end of 2003, and they found that organic corn meal, and only organic corn meal, had significantly dangerous levels of a human toxin, a fungus that had grown in the corn, and what had happened was it had been a really bad year for bugs, and organic producers are not allowed to use certain insecticides, and so their crops were much more significantly affected by this bug, and if the bug eats into the corn plant, a mold forms in there, and that mold is toxic to humans. When you actually harvest the crop, there is that dangerous chemical in the crop, and I can actually leave this for you, it's available on the web, but it just talks about they tested all the standard cornmeal and the organic cornmeal, and the organic cornmeal was found to average as much as 20 times as much (chemical name) as were found in the standard, commercially grown crop, so I don't think you really want to go down that road, because you really don't know what you might find, and it's not the problem, organic products are not supposed to be pure, they are supposed to be grown following a particular set of standards, and they're supposed to be grown not using certain products.

They're not supposed to be 100% pure, that's never been the standard, and the idea of GMO free has never been the standard. And so one of the things I'd really like this committee to really consider when you look at strict liability, why go after that end of it, why not look at this and say, "Why are organic farmers being asked to go above and beyond the National Organic Standards, when they're just being offered an organic price for their product". Why not say in the state of VT, no purchaser of organic products shall ask a VT organic farmer to go beyond the National Organic Standards. If you're only going to pay me an organic price, why should I have to attest that my product is going to be GMO free, which is not the organic standard. The organic standard is that I follow my certification plan, not that I went far beyond it and somehow tried to create an invisible barrier to pollen drift or even avoid organic seed that could easily contain some minute levels of GMOs. Why not look at it that way, instead of only looking at this liability, why not say no organic farmer in VT shall be asked to go beyond the National Organic Standards?