Missing standards. Several violations found in organic produce certification process 

A ruling by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) suspending the accreditation and penalising a firm certifying organic produce for violation of national regulations in the certification process has brought to light several violations in the system. 

APEDA, while suspending the accreditation of Hyderabad-based TQ Cert on January 12 in its ruling, has pointed to some serious lacuna in the organic certification process. Stakeholders say this probably points to a scam running into thousands of crores of rupees. 

Field-level violations

One of the serious lapses found by the authority, which is implementing the national organic programme, is that over 200 farmer groups have been certified by the certifying firm in Madhya Pradesh without the farmers being informed about the certification. 

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Products of some 294 grower groups that traded in conventional produce were passed off as organic ones and procurement of organic cotton from 150 farmer groups was not made as per the agreement signed with the buyer. 

An unannounced inspection by APEDA’s evaluation committee of the grower groups revealed that there were several violations at the field level as farmers were not aware of organic farming. 

Growers apply urea, DAP

Despite the farmers not being aware, they were certified by the firm and the grower groups themselves had not been constituted and were not functioning as per the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP). 

More surprisingly, these farmers applied urea and diammonium phosphate (DAP) for their crops that were certified as organic and they also used genetically-modified cottonseed which is prohibited in organic farming. The crops listed in the transaction certificate (TC) issued by the firm were not grown by the farmers. “...no records are available with the farmer, harvested crops are sold by farmers in local market as conventional but Transaction Certificates have been issued by TQ Cert etc,” APEDA said in its ruling. 

Complaint from Bangladesh

The firm came under scrutiny after APEDA received complaints from importing nations, departments and the Ministry of Textiles, which got a representation from the Bangladesh Textiles Mills Association. The Bangladesh association had complained that transaction certificates (TCs) were not provided against the supply of 16,100 tonnes of organic cotton. 

Moreover, the European Union had also complained that a prohibited substance - ethylene oxide (ETO) - had been found in organic produce sourced from farmers or exported by those certified by the Hyderabad firm. 

While suspending the accreditation for TQ Cert from certifying organic produce under India’s NPOP and the US Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) for one year, APEDA also imposed a “pecuniary” penalty of ₹5 lakh on it.

‘Going for appeal process’

After a hearing by the sub-committee of the National Accreditation Body on January 5, APEDA said the firm resorted to “repeated infringements” and “willful violations” of the regulations. It was charged with failing to tackle the root cause and take appropriate action besides granting certification wrongly. 

TQ Cert, in a communication to its clients on January 13, said “...few (sic) unscrupulous elements” had maligned the implementation of organic standard requirements. It said it was going for the “appeal process” with the competent authority.

“As the number of cases wherein critical procedural lapses identified have been many, it indicated negligence and lack of control system on the part of TQ Cert,” APEDA said in the ruling. 

Charges ‘bereft of factual information’

It also said screening, monitoring of the inspection and certification activities of the certifying firm showed that the negligence affected the data of organic area and production under NPOP as a whole. 

In this, the firm showed cotton productivity as 2.5 tonnes a hectare when the maximum yield was only 1.2 tonnes, stakeholders point out.

TQ Cert, in its appeal, said some of the specific instances quoted by APEDA such as farmers in 200 groups not knowing they were part of it or the 294 groups trading conventional products were not part of the show-cause notices served on it and were “bereft of factual information”.

Specific case of cotton

Stakeholders are not satisfied with the development, saying just suspending a certifying firm will not do. “The so-called farmer groups which farmers are not aware of and had wrongly got certification continue to exist. Also, APEDA has allowed these groups to shift to another certification firm, which is allowing the root cause to continue,” said a stakeholder said.

The stakeholder pointed out that these irregularities have been continuing in the case of organic cotton since 2010. In 2011-12, the organic cotton project was handled by NOCA, which was suspended in 2013 for violations. Then, Bio Cert took over but it was suspended the following year for the same reasons.

Following this, Vedic Certification took over the project and was in charge till 2020, before its operations were stayed for irregularities. TQ Cert then took over and is now facing the same problems. 

Basic problems remain

“The project is moving from one agency to another without tackling the basic problem. This is like operation failure, patient alive,” said a stakeholder. 

In October last year, APEDA had suspended the accreditation of one certifying firm and barred four others from registering any new processor or exporter for organic products certification. 

The action followed a European Commission draft notification to blacklist five certifying agencies from certifying organic products exports from India as some shipments cleared by them failed to meet the norms for the presence of ethylene oxide (ETO). 

Subsequently, the draft was ratified by the members unanimously and is being implemented from January 1. 

Further probe sought

New Delhi-based trade analyst S Chandrasekaran said over the last two decades, the sanction and penalty information relating to certification agencies are never made public. “Therefore, the reputation claimed by these certification agencies is either artificial or constructed, which has encouraged unscrupulous elements to play with the integrity of organic agriculture,” he said. 

The Commerce Ministry and APEDA will have to probe further into the whole issue of organic certification, stakeholders said. 

“This is an example of how farmers producers organization is wrong utilized by a few traders using organic certification agencies. If we don’t act now, the entire foundation of organic agriculture might collapse,” Chandrasekaran said.

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