The initiative, developed by the Competent Authorities in Organic Agriculture of those countries, has aroused international interest.

Pedro Cussianovich, coordinator of the Hemispheric Organic Agriculture Program (PHAO) of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), has announced in Costa Rica that the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic are about to embark on a public consultation on harmonized regional standards for organic production.

The Competent Authorities - the government officials in charge of implementing technical and legal standards for the development of organic production and monitoring and keeping track of organic enterprises in the countries - have been working on the proposal since 2008, with technical support from IICA.

Once instituted, the harmonized standards will facilitate intraregional trade in organic products and spur the development of national markets for products of this kind.

Adoption of the standards will also speed up the recognition of equivalence with countries that have strong trading links with the region, the IICA expert explained.

The methodology for the regional harmonization of organic production standards has aroused interest in various regions of the world. Authorities in Asia, in particular, have expressed interest in replicating the experience of the Central Americans and Dominicans, with support from the Global Organic Market Access (GOMA) project.

The public consultation will be carried out through the communications media in each country, with interested parties being invited to send in their suggestions, accompanied by the pertinent technical, scientific or legal justification. Web and email addresses and post office box numbers will be provided.

A process that took nearly three years to complete

The Competent Authorities in Organic Agriculture of Central America and the Dominican Republic - under the coordination of the Competent Authority of Costa Rica - has spent nearly three years working on the proposed standards.

Initially, the discussions focused on the provisions of the Codex Alimentarius and the national standards of the different countries involved, as well as considering certain elements of the standards of other regions, such as the European Union.

The process began in 2008, with a dialogue conducted via a private discussion group administered by the PHAO. The Competent Authorities used that platform to discuss the structure and contents of the basic proposal and draft a document that was studied in greater depth at a subsequent onsite meeting.

In order to continue their work, in March of this year the Competent Authorities obtained financial support from the Global Organic Market Access project sponsored by FAO, UNTACD and IFOAM.

The support is being provided under an agreement with IICA in which GOMA pledged to fund the remaining stages of the harmonization process and IICA is committed to assisting the Competent Authorities with the process and the management of the resources involved.

Under the agreement, a third onsite meeting was held in Panama City in May of this year. On that occasion, the Competent Authorities revisited the issues on which consensus had yet to be reached and discussed a number of points that were pending.

The meeting was also used to establish the methodological guidelines that will be followed in the countries in the later stages, when the actors in the organic movements will be consulted.

The proposed harmonized standards are now ready to be submitted to a process of public consultation in each country.

Once the consultation has been completed, the Competent Authorities will draw up a new version of the document, incorporating the observations made in the countries, which will be sent to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the form of a notification, following the procedures of good regulatory practices.

After the Competent Authorities have the harmonized document, validated at both the national and international levels, it will be presented to the actors of the organic movements in the countries.

With assistance from IICA, the pertinent steps will then be taken to secure official approval of the proposal via the Central American Agricultural Council (CAC).

For more information, contact
pedro.cussianovich@iica.int