Well the question must really be – what is organics? Well, according to all the standards that exist; the standard of JAS from Japan, The Australian standard, The EU’s, Canada’s, the IFOAM’s standard and so on, there isn’t really a standard. Each is different in their own way. The ones that I have mentioned of course have the biggest market share and if a farmer would like to export his or her products, he would have to get accreditation from a multiple of these standards, thus increasing the farmer’s costs and you pay more.
IFOAM is alone at trying to unite all these standards into one. It is trying to foster what it calls a common system of standards. And it has done so far a superb job. However, it is still trying to manage a group of organizations of 750 members in 105 countries centrally. No wonder they have a quality assurance problem and it’s taking them about 8 weeks to evaluate our application to be a member.
Our primary goal at Diplomatic Goods is to ensure that if you buy something that is organic or better said, something that is a diplomatic good, you should be 100% sure that it is truly organic and adhere to your expectations. How? It is because you yourself had grown it, you yourself had processed it, you yourself sold it, you bought it and you yourself wrote this whole process and the standard of how one goes about doing all this. Now that you know what a diplomatic good is, why would you not eat organics?
Illustration: Nick Owen