Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
International regulations follow the IFOAM Standards. The EU Regulation
(EEC) 2092/91 builds significantly on the value elements of the IFOAM Principles
Ecology and Health, but is not defined with respect to the Principles of Fairness
and Care—specifically in relation to competition, transparency, the prohibition of
GMOs, fairness, equity, respect, justice, animal welfare and future generations are
not considered (Padel et al. 2007 , pp. 22, 23; Padel et al. 2009 ). Lockie et al. ( 2006 )
note that most private organic standards as well, do not codify such values. Similar
to the IFOAM Standard Requirements, social and economic justice issues are
underrepresented. Also the IFOAM Standards do not address the broader meaning
of the Principles of Fairness and Care. Thus the essence of the Principles of Fairness
and Care gets lost in the IFOAM Standards. This not only weakens the impact of
organic on food security, but also food sovereignty.
5.4.3
The IFOAM Accreditation Requirements
The third part of IFOAM Norms address the “IFOAM Accreditation Requirements
for bodies certifying organic production and processing” (IFOAM 2012 ,p.1).This
deals with the requirements for certification bodies themselves, different types of
certification and what we call the responsibility of the certifiers in the certification
process. The issue of concern is how the control and certification procedures
embody the IFOAM Principles ethics and in this way address the issues of food
security.
The content of control and certification of production and processing practices
refers to the fulfillment of the respective national or international regulations in
line with IFOAM Standards. The control process assesses the conformity of diverse
interpretations of regulations in the production and processing.
The control and certification process focus on “how” an actor in the organic
agrofood chain fulfills specified technical standards. Therefore, control does not
directly refer to the IFOAM Principles. It addresses ethical issues only indirectly if
they are part of IFOAM Standards or related regulations (see Chap. 13 ) . Consistent
with the IFOAM Accreditation Requirements and Standards, Principles of Health
and Ecology are central in the control process while Fairness and Care are not. In
short, the absence of attention to these ethical concerns weakens the ability to apply
the Principles in a concrete way to thinking about “feeding the world.”
5.5
Discussion and Conclusions
In addressing if the IFOAM Principles provide an ethical framework that if applied
in practice, would positively contribute to food security, we explored the relevance
of the IFOAM Principles to food supply, processing, distribution/marketing and
food demand. We further examined the three IFOAM Norms documents “IFOAM
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