National Organic Program; Market Development for Mushrooms and Pet Food

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 205</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-NOP-22-0063]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0581-AE13</RIN> <SUBJECT>National Organic Program; Market Development for Mushrooms and Pet Food</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is amending the USDA organic regulations to clarify standards for organic mushrooms and organic pet food. The topics addressed by the rule include mushroom substrate composition and sourcing of mushroom spawn in organic mushroom production, composting requirements for organic mushroom production, composition and labeling requirements for organic pet food, and the use of certain synthetic substances, including taurine, in organic pet food. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule is effective February 21, 2025. <E T="03">Compliance date:</E> Organic operations must comply with the requirements of this rule by February 22, 2027. For additional discussion, see section I.C. of this document. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Erin Healy, Director, Standards Division, National Organic Program. Telephone: 202-720-3252. Email: <E T="03">Erin.Healy@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. General Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Does this final rule apply to me?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Summary of Provisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Implementation and Compliance Dates</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Purpose and Need for the Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) Recommendations on Mushrooms and Pet Food</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Community and Stakeholder Feedback</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Organic Mushroom Standard</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Mushroom Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Need for Organic Mushroom Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Overview of Final Rule Policy and Responses to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Organic Pet Food Standard</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Pet Food Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Need for Organic Pet Food Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Overview of Final Rule Policy and Responses to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Analyses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Orders 12866, 13563, 14094, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Executive Order 12988</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Executive Order 13132</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Executive Order 13175</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Civil Rights Impact Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this final rule apply to me?</HD> You may be affected by this final rule if you are engaged in organic mushroom production, pet food handling, or related activities. Potentially affected entities may include, but are not limited to, the following: • Organic mushroom producers (including organic spawn producers); • Organic pet food manufacturers; • Individuals or business entities that are considering organic certification for pet food or mushroom production (or related activities, such as spawn production); • USDA-accredited certifying agents (or “certifiers”), inspectors, and certification review personnel. This list is not exhaustive but identifies key entities that this rule may affect. Other types of entities may also be affected. To determine whether you or your business may be affected by this action, you should carefully examine the regulatory text and discussion below. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this rule to a particular entity, contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of Provisions</HD> Through the amendments in this final rule, AMS is establishing standards for organic mushroom production and pet food handling. The standards are discussed in detail in this document. In summary, the rule: • Establishes definitions for <E T="03">mushroom, mushroom mycelium, mushroom spawn, mushroom spawn media,</E> and <E T="03">mushroom substrate</E> for the purposes of the USDA organic regulations. • Clarifies that mushrooms are a type of crop and updates the definition of <E T="03">crops</E> to include mushrooms. • Creates a new section of the organic regulations titled “Mushroom Production Practice Standard,” to describe standards related to the production of mushrooms, mushroom spawn, and products of mushroom production. • Specifies allowed substances in organic mushroom spawn media and organic mushroom substrate. • Requires that uncomposted plant materials used in mushroom substrate be organic when commercially available; requires that operations describe in their organic system plan the procedures and criteria used to search for organic materials and the recordkeeping system used to track purchases of nonorganic plant materials. • Allows nonorganic wood materials in mushroom substrate and spawn media. • Requires that operations use organic mushroom spawn when commercially available. • Describes minimum requirements for compost used in mushroom substrate. (The requirements for compost used in other types of crop production ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> plants) are unchanged.) • Establishes definitions for <E T="03">pet</E> and <E T="03">pet food</E> for the purposes of the USDA organic regulations and clarifies that pet food is distinct from livestock feed under these regulations. • Clarifies the requirements for composition and labeling of organic pet food using the existing regulatory framework for processed organic products. • Allows use of synthetic taurine (an amino acid) in organic pet food, as well as other vitamins and minerals that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Implementation and Compliance Dates</HD> As described in the <E T="02">DATES</E> section of this rule, this rule becomes effective on February 21, 2025. However, AMS is allowing an additional two (2) years for organic operations to comply with the requirements of the final rule. Organic operations must comply with the final rule by February 22, 2027. The compliance date establishes the date by which organic operations must comply with the requirements. However, organic operations may choose to comply with the final rule prior to the compliance date. For example, pet food operations may use taurine in organic pet food starting on the effective date of the final rule. For a discussion of the public comments related to the rule's implementation and compliance dates, see “Responses to Public Comments on Implementation Timeline” sections below in III.C. for mushrooms and IV.C. for pet food. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose and Need for the Rule</HD> This final rule amends the USDA organic regulations to establish specific standards for organic mushroom production and organic pet food handling. The purpose of these amendments is to resolve uncertainty and inconsistency in how the organic regulations apply to these two products. Inconsistent certification and enforcement practices for organic mushrooms and pet food fail to meet one of the purposes of the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA): to assure consumers that organically produced products meet a consistent standard (7 U.S.C. 6501(2)). Based on market penetration data and feedback from stakeholders, AMS believes that creating more consistency in the market and ensuring regulatory certainty will create conditions for growth in these two markets and other latent markets that support them, such as the markets for mushroom substrate and organic slaughter by-products. Certifiers have been using the organic crop production standards to certify organic mushrooms; however, AMS believes new standards are necessary to adequately address unique aspects of mushroom production that differ significantly from plant production. Certifiers' attempts to interpret the existing crop standards for mushroom production are currently inconsistent, which may lead to producers inconsistently applying the standards to substrate, spawn, and compost for mushroom production. Similarly, the current organic regulations do not specifically address pet food. Producers and certifiers have been applying a combination of the handling standards for processed products and the organic livestock feed standards to certify organic pet food, but their practices were not uniform. Neither the handling standards nor the livestock standards are sufficient to address the range of ingredients and nutrients that are necessary for pets. For example, the livestock feed standards include allowances for many of the nutrients that are necessary for pets but prohibit common pet food ingredients, such as slaughter by-products ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> animal and poultry by-product meal, animal liver). This rule also addresses feedback from the organic industry, which has asked USDA to implement outstanding NOSB recommendations, including standards for these two product categories. Stakeholders encouraged AMS to prioritize rulemaking for additional practice standards, including standards for organic pet food and mushrooms, at the March 2022 virtual listening session hosted by AMS. The changes in this rule are based on NOSB recommendations for mushroom production and pet food handling in response to the org ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 191k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━