One Organic Standard

The problem

Australian organic regulation has failed organic operators!

34 years of certification bodies controlling our industry and a focus on the Department of Agriculture to produce domestic regulation has FAILED. Australia has transformed from a world leader in the 1980s to a world laggard.

Genuine organic operators are losing to pretenders and are really hurting. To survive, our industry MUST stamp out unfair practices from within our industry and from outside.

The system of private industry standards is the root-cause of the industry’s woes. The proliferation of private standards in Australia causes confusion for consumers, leads to certifying bodies competing for clients by weakening organic standards, and increases compliance costs for all businesses involved in the production and sale of organic products.

Organic Operators Australia has been trying to work with the certifiers and standard owners to improve domestic regulation, but we are being obstructed by entrenched private standards in our push for ONE industry-led domestic standard and better integrity.

We have a developed a One Organic Standard strategy, where the industry can fix most of these issues itself.

It’s time for the organic industry to determine its own future!

Background

Every significant study of the domestic organic market (Chang 2004, Hall 2007, Wynen 2007, Do 2015, Policy Partners 2017, Samuel 2021) and some recent high level consulting reports to government (Deloitte 2021, Price Waterhouse Coopers 2022), report on chaos, misinformation, and lack of regulation as a major inhibiting factor in consumer trust and/or in greater uptake of organic certification by producers (Marshall, 2024 in press).

One of these reports observed that:

The sector is fragmented and driven by individual self-interests.
Certification is a driver instead of a means to demonstrate specific value to the consumer.
There is no cohesive industry structure and the current certification systems seem to hinder rather than drive value.
The sector needs a strong value proposition based on value creation and not competition with conventional agriculture, with a harmonised certification process that demonstrates value.
A lack of sector data and analysed information needs to be rectified to inform decision-making and gain investment into the sector.

(Samuel 2021, p.5).

Another of these reports observed that:

The future for Australia’s organic industry could be more prosperous, leveraging off a growing consumer preference for premium products. But the organic industry’s leadership needs to eschew divisiveness and act in the interests of the broader industry. It is imperative to get three things right:

• value creation—the structure and objectives of the peak body must create value for the industry, by focussing on the industry’s future and the interests of organic growers, processors and traders

• effective regulation—the industry’s self-regulation arrangements must be reformed in the best interests of organic growers, processors and traders, and to promote domestic market integrity and market access abroad

• building trust—to “bring the whole industry along”, the organisational processes must embed strongly democratic mechanisms, including representation from all sectors of the industry and a strong emphasis on good governance—including a commitment to transparent processes

(Policy Partners 2017, p.iv).

The dysfunction is recognised almost universally in the organic industry. Most producers, processors, marketers, organic activists, and consumers, consider that governance of organic standards and certification in Australia needs reform.

For most of the last 30 years, the Australian Government has consistently told the organic industry that it would not regulate, and indeed does not have the requisite Constitutional power to regulate, the domestic organic market in the way that organic markets overseas are regulated.

• In 2023, the Australian Government reiterated this advice very publicly. Through media release, the Australian Government advised the organic industry that it had taken a clear decision to not implement domestic regulation of the organic industry.
• Following several years of industry consultation, and after two cost-benefit analyses found the costs would outweigh the benefits, the Agriculture Minister Senator Murray Watt said “While a mandatory domestic standard could provide a range of potential benefits for organic sector, the costs of designing, monitoring and enforcing an economy-wide regulatory scheme of this nature would be significant".
• Consequently, the Government-owned National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce is only used to regulate exports.

Despite significant collaborative investment by the organic industry to establish the AS6000 in 2009 (at the time, essentially a copy of the National Standard applying only to exports), accredited certifying bodies have mostly declined to adopt AS6000. Only one certifying body uses AS6000 to any significant extent.

• If AS6000 were universally adopted by certifying bodies for use in the domestic market, it would be used by the courts and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to establish whether organic claims are compliant with the standard.

In the absence of government regulation of the domestic organic market, the failure of coordinated industry-led regulation has caused confusion. Four private standards are commonly applied in the domestic market by five government-accredited (for export only) certification bodies, as well as several unaccredited certification bodies, an unknown number of recently established Participatory Guarantee Schemes (PGS), and one long-established PGS that uses the IFOAM Basic Standard (Marshall, 2024 in press).

There are disputes about the compliance of high-visibility nationally distributed certified organic products; uncertified produce is common in local stores and farmers markets, and possibly accounts for half of fresh produce sales in the organic category; interpretation of allowable practices sometimes differs between certification bodies; information and labels on permitted inputs is inconsistent; and there is some apparent lack of equilibrium in how retail certification is delivered between certification bodies (Marshall, 2024 in press).

Overall, growers, traders, and consumers are exposed to lack of information, misinformation and lack of transparency about how the industry is managed, and the integrity of organic products.

1. Fix the standard

We need collective action to adopt just one domestic standard recognised by the courts and internationally.

1.1. Appoint a professional standards manager to manage the domestic standard. This will be Standards Australia.

1.2. Harmonise the export standards with AS6000. Encourage the Australian Government to adopt AS6000 as the export standard.

1.3. Provide free access to AS6000 for all OIA Ltd members.

1.4. Improve the standard.

• Incorporate fact-based performance measures and practices in the standard, including in respect of sustainability and biodiversity.
• Align the standard with the policy positions of IFOAM-Organics International.
• Review for consistency with Australian Consumer Law and emerging international requirements for climate-related financial disclosures and sustainability claims. 

2. Integrity measures

2.1. Eliminate non-genuine organic practices from our industry. Certifying bodies must be accredited to use AS6000—by the Australian Government for exports and by a recognised accreditor (e.g. JASANZ) for domestic.

2.2. Develop a transition program for organic operators to shift from existing certification to AS6000.

2.3. Mandate the Standards Australia logo on all organic packaging.

2.4. Launch consumer education campaign around certified organic products and the Standards Australia logo.

2.5. Establish ONE register of all certified organic operators and promote its use.

2.6. Implement integrity and conduct measures: for certifiers, auditors, operators, traders.

• Code of conduct, incorporating principals of fairness, respect, transparency, honesty.
• Accreditation program for certifying bodies and auditors, incorporating professional standards.

2.7. Act strategically to effect the enforcement of these integrity measures.

3. Reinforce organic principles

3.1. Promote organic farming principles in:

• resolving the tension between commercial agriculture and promoting sustainability and biodiversity
• aligning values with the Australian community

3.2. Promote regenerative agriculture as being a pathway to organic agriculture. 

3.3. Lobby government to reform all forms of agricultural assistance so they are aligned with sustainability and biodiversity objectives.

3.4. Lobby the Australian Government and Rural Development Corporations to ensure organic operators get their fair share of R&D expenditure.

3.5. Establish an organic agriculture research institute to undertake R&D and facilitate information sharing for existing and prospective organic operators.

3.6. Actively lobby:

• in collaboration with like-minded Indigenous and environmental organisations
• to counter campaigns to allow genetically modified organisms into the Australian food chain
• to counter the use of chemicals in agriculture that are harmful to human health and biodiversity

The first step

Modenise the AS6000 so that it can be the One Organic Standard recognised by the courts and internationally.

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Subsequent steps

• Free access to AS6000 for organic operators
• Negotiate with Australian Government to adopt AS6000 for export
• All certifiers commence certification against One Organic Standard
• Improved integrity and conduct measures: for certifiers, auditors, operators, traders
• Eliminate non-genuine organic practices from our industry and promote organic farming principles
• Review the AS6000 to be consistent with best practice globally
• Negotiate with all Governments that AS6000 become the mandatory organic standard