With continued support from GOMA, the competent authorities from Central American and the Dominican Republic have progressed considerably on the text of a common regulation for organic agriculture in seven countries – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua, Panama and Dominican Republic. The scope of the regulation includes standards for organic production and processing, requirements for organic certification bodies, control and enforcement mechanisms, and import requirements. In July, 2010 a national consultation process was undertaken for the first draft of the regulation. Notices were placed in the main newspapers and stakeholders were invited by the competent authorities to workshops on the regulations. Most countries implemented the workshops in the fourth quarter of 2010. The results of the consultations were prepared by each country and submitted to IICA (Inter-American Instiutute for Cooperation on Agriculture), which GOMA’s partner for implementing the assistance to the competent authorities. In February, 2011 the competent authorities (except Nicaragua) plus three observers from the private sector met in San Jose, Costa Rica and reviewed a matrix of the comments compiled by IICA. The observers were two producers from Guatemala and Costa Rica and the president of the organic agriculture movement from El Salvador. Decisions were taken on the comments and the draft was amended accordingly during the meeting.
The next steps in process are some editing and reformatting to align the document according to standard requirements for such documents in Central America, and then submission of notification to WTO and an international comment period. Barring major objections in the WTO process, the regulation should be ready for announcement and distribution in the countries by the end of 2011. After this, those countries with current regulations will take steps to harmonize their country regulations with the regional one.
The intent of this regulation is to facilitate a regional organic market and position the countries for equivalence discussions with other importing countries/regions.