Organic waste
Has the European Commission gone loco with its organic logo plans? Certainly, many of the leading champions of the organic movement believe that it has gone completely off the rails if it thinks they will support its plans for a new EU-wide standard logo. They also allege it is undermining the credibility and integrity of the organic tag.
The no-doubt well-intentioned effort to harmonise labelling and put momentum behind the growing organic market has been so badly received by the supposed beneficiaries that it is a textbook lesson in just how a governmental decision-making process can misunderstand, distort and throttle the very life from, projects best left in the hands of those who conceived and drove them forward with vision and vigour.
Regulation EC 834/2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products dealt with many aspects of organic foods and made specific provision for a new EU logo. It provides that:
- Use of the new EU organic logo will be mandatory from January 2009, although it can still be accompanied by a national or private logo (thus setting in stone a system of a multiplicity of different, duplicate, and inevitably confusing systems).
- Food will be allowed to carry a logo if at least 95% of the ingredients are organic.
- The organic logo can still be used even if there is an accidental presence of genetically modified organisms below 0.9%.
Whether the organic movement is right or wrong, surely the Commission must have known that the final provision, permitting GM material in organic foods, would be a red rag to leading organisations in the field.
The Commission promptly compounded its errors by proposing to include the word "bio" in the new logo. This might have benign connotations in France and Germany, but to the British, it smacks of the "biotechnology" industry whose products are anathema to them.
And with classic determination to bang a final nail into their own coffin, the bureaucrats commissioned a design that was so close to the company logo of Aldi, that it had to be binned in March before it was launched.
They have decided instead to launch a competition for EU citizens to design a new logo - a European Song Contest for budding logo designers! Is this really what European democracy holds in store for the future?
To ensure that the competition can engage, delight and entertain us, and serve no doubt as an intellectual alternative to all those wars we used to fight to assert our national identities, the Commission has asked the Council to delay the introduction of its new logo until January 2010.
As Agriculture Commissioner Fischer Boel has invested so much political capital in this project, there is no chance of repeal of the Regulation.
This should not have been forced to become a debate about the acceptability of GM material in the food chain. That was unfortunate and unnecessary.
The organics sector is one area where self-regulation has really worked - driving forward changes in consumer attitude and industry practices.
Whether the movement's prejudices are logical or stand rigorous scientific scrutiny is not the point. It was their idea, their project, and their intellectual property. The Commission should leave them to persuade shoppers to trust their brand identity if they can.
The Commission would be better to concentrate instead on finding ways to reduce the colossal burdens of over-regulation that the wider food sector is having to confront. Has it really nothing better to do? Would it conceivably bring forward a "Halal" or "Kosher" kite-mark which permitted the inclusion of pork, or establish a vegetarian logo which permitted the inclusion of meat products?
The benefits to manufacturers and retailers of using the new logo will be lost if influential, respected and well-resourced organisations representing those who actually care about such things, undermine its credibility. Indeed, it could prove to be the mark of Cain!
Chris Whitehouse is md of The Whitehouse Consultancy, which advises clients how best to identify, approach and influence key decision-makers in Brussels and the UK government.
Contact him at: puevf.juvgrubhfr@juvgrubhfrpbafhygvat.pb.hx
