Floral industry members interested in participating in a national standard for sustainable agriculture are invited to attend a meeting on Oct. 29 and 30 at the University of California, Berkeley.

SAF will be represented at the meeting, and "all interested stakeholders are invited to contribute to this consensus-based process governed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) rules," says Linda Brown, executive vice president for Scientific Certification Systems.

The purpose of the opening meeting is to launch the ANSI process during which stakeholders will help shape the Sustainable Agriculture Practice Standard for Food, Fiber and Biofuel Crop Producers and Agricultural Product Handlers and Processors. The Leonardo Academy is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization and will facilitate the ANSI stakeholder standard-setting process.

The Draft National Sustainable Agriculture Standard for Trial Use is already in use as the basis for certifying sustainably produced cut flowers and potted plants under the VeriFlora(tm) certification program.

Once the standardization process is finalized, the resulting sustainable agriculture standard will serve as a national benchmark for verification of best practices in agriculture sustainability. View the draft standard for trial use and read about the elements of sustainable agriculture.

During the meeting, attendees will learn about the standard and ANSI's process for finalizing it. Attendees will then form issue or sector-specific subcommittees and identify issues they will want to address in refining the standard. These subcommittees will continue to meet 10 times a year via conference call to work on particular issues and guide the standard into final form.

The draft standard was written by Scientific Certification Systems, a third-party certifier and developer of sustainability standards, and published by the American National Standards Institute. The standard addresses environmental, socioeconomic and product quality issues.

A second meeting, with the same agenda, will be held at the end of February or in early March. The date and location will be announced by Nov. 1. For more information or to RSVP, contact Michael Arny at the Leonardo Academy.

--Vanessa Machir
vmachir@safnow.org

 

Previous Article    Next Article