MOSA provides our clients with much more than just certification.

Joe Pedretti

MOSA Client Services Director

Executive Director's Report

Executive Director’s Report

By Cori Skolaski

Have you heard the old blessing/curse, “May you live in interesting times.”? Climate change and politics are the obvious big-picture examples, and with the two new rules from the NOP in the last year - Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE), and Organic Livestock and Poultry Practice (OLPP), times certainly are interesting!

SOE and OLPP have necessitated a lot of change at the NOP, MOSA, and probably at your operation. In this issue, Joe Pedretti has written an article about the evolution of the NOP regarding securing the integrity of the organic industry. It’s interesting to take a step back and see the through-line that exists that you don’t always notice in the moment, making the implementation of these Rules seem inevitable and necessary.

You may know that the NOP now requires certifiers to create Organic Certificates through the Organic Integrity Database (OID) and your Certificate may look a little different. The Certificate can only display one name on it, which is the person or entity the NOP and the industry consider the “responsible party.” We understand that many of our clients have more than one person they want to be listed for marketing or other purposes, so my best advice to you is to speak with a legal representative to ask about forming a partnership or an LLC that includes all the names. Another difference on Certificates is that there is more information on it than previously displayed, such as the operation’s physical and mailing address, email, website, phone number, and the anniversary date is the year. These changes reflect the transparency and security that the NOP is working for. What is missing on the Certificate are specific categories, and we've reported our concern about this to the NOP and hope for a quick resolution. Handler Clients should refer to our COPS for their certified product Certificate categories.

If you have concerns about what is displayed, please contact us with alternate information and we can make updates to OID which will update your Certificate. Next year, you can expect to see changes on your Annual Update to accommodate this information.

Another exciting change to announce is our new Poultry Organic System Plan. For poultry producers with no crop production or sales, we have combined the Livestock and Crop OSPs into a single specialized Poultry OSP. That’s right, for many of our poultry clients you will now have only one OSP to complete! Look for your new Poultry OSP forms soon. We’re asking for you to complete these for review during your 2024 inspection.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter. There is a lot of useful information and interesting articles - make sure you read the article about your annual inspection! As always, if you have any questions or comments about anything in this newsletter or about MOSA please feel free to contact me at Cori@MosaOrganic.org or 844-637-2526. Thank you for reading, and thanks for your continued commitment to organic integrity.