Hindu Business Line: New Delhi: Wednesday, 17 December 2014.
Following up on its October investigation of data
irregularities in the National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF), the Crop Care
Federation of India (CCFI) stated on Tuesday that it had found pesticide
residues in one-third of the organic products retailed in New Delhi that are
marketed as chemical pesticide-free.
The owner of a retail store mentioned in the
response by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), to an RTI filed
by CCFI, however, was unaware of the study conducted on its product but told
Business Line that all its products had been organically certified by bodies
recognised by the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP). The CCFI
communicated to BL that the Government itself conducted tests on organic
vegetables and fruits and that it had filed the RTI to learn specific details
about the results.
It is not clear in the IARI response as to how
many organic retail outlets were tracked by CCFI, an association of pesticides
manufacturers, besides ‘The Altitude Store’ from where 150 samples across a
range of vegetables, including cauliflower, cabbage, brinjal, green pea and
okra, were tested between January 2012 and October 2014.
Of these, 50 were found to have chemical pesticide
residues while 10 were above the maximum residue level (MRL). Acetamiprid,
Chlorpyrifos, Cypermethrin and Flubendiamide were among the pesticides
detected.
“Of late, it has become a fashion to talk about
organic agriculture in policy circles without knowing the ground reality right
under their nose,” said Rajju Shroff, Chairman, CCFI, in a press statement
which added “that the test results only proved long held suspicion that organic
farms do use pesticides…and stealthily sell the products as organic to gain
from premium price that people pay”.
The CCFI statement said that there was no specific
regulation in India to punish such retailers and not a single violator had been
taken to task for falling foul of the Food Safety and Standards Act (2006) that
defined "misbranded food as an article of food offered or promoted for
sale with false, misleading or deceptive claim upon the label of the
package" and imposed a penalty of up to Rs. 3 lakhs on fraudulent sellers.
Unfair report
Ayesha Grewal, who manages Altitude, stated that
chances of the outlet’s products containing pesticides were low but did explain
that the business model worked largely on trust with suppliers. With everything
that is retailed being certified organic, Grewal felt that strengthening such
regulatory checks could be a way to prevent such reports emerging in the
future.
“We have to rely on the certifying agent and work
as per their reports. If they’re telling us that our products our organic by
international standards, we trust them. If it turns out that they are not doing
their job properly, then it has a negative impact on us,” she said.
Altitude sources vegetables mainly from
Uttarakhand (certified by the Uttarakhand Stated Seed Certification Agency), a
group of farmers in Haryana’s Sonipat district (SGS India-certified), and from
its own farm in Rajasthan’s Alwar district (certified by OneCert Asia Agri
Certification Ltd). More than a hundred suppliers work with the company,
providing meat and poultry, tea, coffee, cereals etc.
“We have now started moving into sourcing
vegetables in a big way from our own farm where we have taken precautionary measures
to keep out pesticides, including situating the patch in the middle of the 40
acres, planting trees which act as windbreakers and also getting the water
tested regularly,” explained Grewal.
The firm recently snapped ties with two suppliers
in the last three months since it was felt that they were not working as per
organic norms.
“Even if I was to assume that my store did have
produce that chemical residues why that should be used to execute the entire
organic market. It doesn’t appear to be a fair report,” she added.