EU Commission no longer recognises organic salmon from Norway

From 1 January 2015 organic salmon from Norway has no longer been organic. That's the opinion of the EU Commission and it has informed the member states of this in writing. What the consequences are is not the least bit clear. The only thing that is clear is the fact the production conditions of Norwegian organic salmon farmers have not changed. What's going on here is to do with the legal situation– and diplomacy in agriculture.

Norway is not a member of the EU. However, it belongs, like Iceland and Liechtenstein, to the European Economic Area (EEA). This agreement allowed these three states to participate in the European internal market and committed them to adopting important single market regulations in their national legislation. One of these is the EU Organic Regulation. The new version in Regulations 834/2007 and 889/2008 have still not been implemented by Norway, so that pro forma the old EU Organic Regulation of 1992 still applies – and that Regulation did not contain any rules on fish farming.

It was not until 2009 that organic fish was incorporated in the Regulation and it was made clear that national rules would be tolerated only until 1 January 2015. Up to that date Norway was allowed to certify organic salmon according to its own rules. Since that date only certificates in compliance with the Regulations 834/2007 and 889/2008 are valid – and this has still not been implmented by Norway. So the EU Commission concludes that there can't be any EU-certified organic salmon coming from Norway.

EU Commission: not a word for one-and-a-half years – now it's in a hurry

It took time for the EU Commission too to recognise there had been a serious problem since 1.1. 2015. Only in June 2015 did inspectors of the Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) of the EU become aware that the Norwegian control organisation Debio was still issuing EU organic certificates for Norwegian salmon and packers were using the EU organic logo. Its report also states that the Norwegian organic control authority NFSA had, in the absence of any legal basis, not monitored the work of the control organisation in acquaculture.

It then took a good year before the EU Commission informed the representatives of the organic authorities in the middle of July 2016 in a regular meeting of the committee on organic production and it was at the end of July that it sent out its written report. In this report it gives as its reason that concerns were raised by a number of member states and producer organisations. The report also mentions the fact that the representatives of Germany, Italy and France had further questions and asked Norway (as an observer) for an interim solution.

What is not contained in the report is how the member states are to implement the points made by the Commission regarding the legal situation. The people affected by this are not only the German fish suppliers and retailers but, in particular, the whole Norwegian organic salmon farming industry. SalMar alone, the biggest source, produced 9,000 tonnes of organic salmon in 2015, and in total it comes to around 14,000 tonnes a year. According to the publication IntraFish, organic salmon currently being farmed in Norway have a market value of more than 100 million euros.

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