NOSB Part Two

Yesterday we took a brief look at what the National Organic Standards Board does and a little bit about how 2015 shaped up. Harold Austin is a member of the National Organics Standards Board and talks about the Organic Sunset Process.

AUSTIN: The Sunset Process as it now exists, the materials motions come out of the subcommittee for either the spring or the fall meeting. We have to bring them out from the subcommittees for the whole board to vote on so they come out with a motion to remove thus requiring ten votes out of the fifteen to physically remove something from the national list.

That's a big change from the old way of doing things.

AUSTIN: It also allows for a sustainable process and gives the organic stakeholders assurance of such. It also helps to ensure that the process is ruled by the majority rather than by the minority as was the case with the old process of Sunset. A simple six-person vote could essentially delist anything under the old Sunset process.

Austin says that advocates have filed suit saying that nothing will ever come off the list.

AUSTIN: I'm here to tell you that's a bald faced lie. In the fall of 2014 we removed materials off of this Sunset list under this process. In the spring of 2015, we removed materials off of the national list that were listed for the 2016 Sunset materials and in the fall we removed materials off of the national list under this current process as well.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.