Greek Products
But, thanks to EU and Greek government programs, Greece is showing some impressive results. While olives (and their derivative, olive oil) and cereals are still the most cultivated organic crops, there are now many new entries, like citrus fruits, currants, beans and herbs.
Artisanal cheese producers are using organic milk for their cheese, as are yogurt makers. There is organic honey, organic saffron and organic wine. There are organic farm-raised fish as well as cold cuts. Packaged and processed foods are appearing on the market.

Many Greeks families either own their own small plots of land, the fruits of which they consume themselves or share with friends. As I said, farming is human-intensive in Greece. Many family farmers may spray a bit of something on their plants or trees, but most consider their products fully organic. Of course they are not, exactly, but that is what they think. This means that labelling a product organic is an exercise in futility: most Greeks won’t pay more for organic products. As a result, most of Greece’s organic output is exported to other countries, mostly in the EU.

Organic Market
According to the magazine Amber Waves, the original 15 member states of the EU and the U.S. together accounted for 95 percent of the $25 billion in world retail sales of organic food products in 2003, with the two areas each accounting for about half of those sales.
Yet the EU, again in 2003, had about five times more farms under organic cultivation than the US. Consider, for a moment, that neither the EU nor the US currently accepts the organic certification methods used by the other. This means neither may legally export its organic products to the other. Yes, producers may elect to be certified under both standards, and some do. Still, five times more farmland?

Differing Standards
This brings us the subject of what organic really means today, particularly as it is practiced in the EU and the United States. Both the EU and the US have adopted standards and accreditation methods for organic production. These standards are fairly similar, though with some profound exceptions which I’ll get to later.

The EU began regulating organic production back in 1991 with the enactment of EU Regulation 2092/91.
The regulation has been updated repeatedly, with the last provisions published in June of 2007. In 1990 the US federal government passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), which required the US government to develop national standards for organic foods. These standards were defined in 2002.

By law, only products that meet the National Organic Standards (NOS) and are certified as such, may be labelled as organic.

On the face of it, the EU organics standards appear similar – if not in some cases less strict – than US standards. For example, the US requires a three-year conversion period for farmland with no exceptions, while the EU generally requires two years for annuals and three years for perennials, with some exceptions. The US also requires a land buffer between organic land and land under conventional farming.

On the other hand, the EU completely prohibits the use of genetically modified products: there is an explicit limit of 0.9 percent for the accidental presence of authorized GMOs. A glaring difference between the standards has to do with the treatment of livestock. I do not have the stomach to go into that now in detail.

US Loopholes
There are other differences. The NOS allows some “conventional” products to be used in organic production. These products are enumerated on the so-called National List. Needless to say, some producers (shockingly, the larger ones) spend much time lobbying the USDA to increase the number of conventional pro-ducts on the National List. Despite fervent opposition from consumer groups like the Organic Consumers
Association, this past May the USDA approved, on an interim basis, the inclusion of 38 additional products to the list. These include casings used for sausages that come from the intestines of conventionally raised cattle as well as fish oil from non-organic fish.

Another favorite NOS loophole is what I like to call the Oops Clause. It reads: “As long as an organic operation has not used excluded methods and takes reasonable steps to avoid contact with the products of excluded methods … the unintentional presence of the products of excluded methods should not affect the status of an organic product or operation.”

The key word here is ‘unintentional’. To be fair, even if such things as pesticides accidentally get into organic food, said pesticides cannot exceed greater than 5% of the EPA’s tolerance for the specific residue detected. Reassuringly, the EPA tests four baskets of food a year.