USDA National Organic Program

The programme rests on a few structural pieces. Operations wishing to sell organic product must develop an organic system plan describing how they will comply, and must be certified by a certifying agent accredited by the USDA. Permitted and prohibited substances are administered through a national list, which is amended over time on the advice of an advisory board with representation from across the organic community — a mechanism that gives the programme a public, contested process for deciding what organic means in practice.

One structural feature distinguishes it from most certification in this section, and from the EU model. The USDA accredits certifying agents directly, rather than relying on a separate national accreditation body to accredit certification bodies against an international accreditation standard. The regulator is therefore both rule-maker and accreditor, which concentrates responsibility for the integrity of the whole system in one place.

Product certified organic elsewhere is not automatically organic in the United States. It may be sold as organic there through the routes the regulations provide, which turn in general terms on arrangements between the USDA and foreign authorities, or on certification by an agent USDA has accredited to certify operations abroad to the US rules. The specific arrangements — which countries, which products, on what terms, and with what exceptions — are matters of current US law and policy that change, and none are stated here.

A recurring subtlety deserves flagging. Arrangements between organic authorities are frequently equivalence arrangements rather than declarations that the rules are identical, and they commonly carry exceptions where the frameworks genuinely diverge. The practical consequence is that "recognised" rarely means "interchangeable without qualification" — and an exporter needs the terms of the specific arrangement for their specific product, not a general impression that two systems recognise each other.

The programme governs the organic claim and nothing beyond it. Organic food in the United States is subject to the same federal food-safety law as any other food, and organic certification exempts a product from none of it. Nor does the programme grade anything: organic produce and grain are graded under the ordinary commodity grade standards, which are entirely separate instruments administered on a different basis.

• Not a food-safety programme — federal food-safety law applies to organic food identically
• Not a residue guarantee — the rules restrict what operators apply, not what the environment contains
• Not a grading standard — USDA commodity grades are separate and apply regardless of organic status
• Not applicable outside the United States — it governs the US market and product sold there as organic
• Not identical to any other country’s organic rules — recognition is by arrangement, with exceptions

As with the EU regulation, the mandatory classification here needs reading correctly. No producer is required to be organic. The obligation is conditional: a producer who wishes to sell product in the United States described as organic comes within the programme and must comply with it. A producer making no organic claim is unaffected.