Sustainability Stakeholders

Industry advocates and those who want to make sure they are in the know on the proposed American National Standard for Sustainable Agriculture will be hashing out details this Friday in Arlington, Va.

The meeting organized by the Leonardo Academy is an introduction to the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) process to review and refine the “Sustainable Agriculture Practice Standard for Food, Fiber and biofuel Crop Producers and Agricultural Product Handlers and Processors” (SCS-001: Draft Standard for Trial Use).

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The proposed draft standard was modeled after the VeriFlora certification program developed by Scientific Certification Systems.

Friday’s meeting is the second in a series, which began Oct. 29-30 in Berkeley, Calif. Since then there have been three teleconference calls for interested parties to get acquainted with the draft standard and formalization process and determine if they will actively participate in working on the draft standard. According to Leonardo Academy, “Through this process, the collective wisdom of stakeholders representing many points of view will be brought together.”

The Leonardo Academy, an ANSI-accredited standards development organization, is assembling a stakeholder group to participate in a transparent, consensus-building process. This standards committee will be seated in April and be made up of producers (growers), users (customers), environmentalists and general interest groups. While this group will have voting power on revisions to the proposed standard, other nonvoting participants will be assembled to work on committees that hash out details.

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For more information visit www.leonardoacademy.org/Projects/ansi-SustainAg.htm or www.ofa.org.

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