Wedge Organic Certification

By Susan Stewart, Organic Certification and Sustainability Coordinator

It is my pleasure to congratulate our newest Certified Organic Department, the Wedge Deli, joining our other food handling Departments on the Wedge's 2009 Organic Certificate. The Wedge is very proud that our Deli Department can be formally recognized as the first Certified Organic Deli Department in Minnesota, and as far as we can tell, it may be the first Certified Organic Deli in the country. Be sure to look for the Wedge's yellow Certified Organic stickers on Deli items in the Grab 'N Go Case and in the Deli's Cold Service Case. Who could have known that our little Co-op would just keep getting better!

The Wedge was first certified as an organic retailer in 2002 (read about it at www.wedge.coop/about/about-certified.html). As important as deciding to become Certified Organic in the first place is why we maintain our Certification and work to bring new departments into the program. It isn't easy; the rules get updated and our staff changes, so we must constantly train and re-train. Sometimes it seems like the USDA and the National Organic Program (NOP) are working to unravel the basic principles of transparency in the program as they clarify and expand rules. But transparency is fundamental to Certified Organic, and for a retailer it means being observed doing what you say you are doing, all the time.

To retain our standing as a Certified Organic Retailer, we submit a document prior to our annual inspection. The document describes what we do and how we do it. Some of it is basic, a snapshot of how the Wedge operates as a business. Other parts are comprehensive, requiring us to document every pinch of certified organic ingredients in Deli recipes, every cleaning product we use and even where we store them.

The document includes practices such as maintaining a chain of custody for every certified organic product, continuous review of labels and operational procedures that are strictly proprietary. This document is what we call The Handling Plan, and it is the basis of the inspection. The inspector studies The Handling Plan before the visit to our co-op and comes here ready to observe, in real time, how The Plan is implemented by every staff member on every shift, every day. The inspector also takes products off our shelves to see if we can track down the organic certificates for each product, a requirement for a Certified Retailer. In the case of the Deli and the Bakehouse, that means all the Organic Certificates for all the organic ingredients listed on the label. The inspector walks through the Co-op, questions staff, looks at labels and shelf tags, and then disappears to write up the findings.

Inspectors are hired as third party, independent observers by an Accredited Certification Agency. You can read more about them at www.ioia.net. Their findings are submitted to the Accredited Certification Agency that is selected by the applicant. The Wedge uses the Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA) and you can read more about them at www.mosaorganic.org. The Wedge receives a summary of findings a few months later and gets a chance to clarify any unanswered questions and provide additional documentation, if needed. In February 2009, we received our renewed certificate which we posted on our web site. You can see what it looks like at www.wedge.coop/about/about-organic-certificates.html.

Every year we ask ourselves, either quietly to ourselves as individuals or as a collective: why do we do this? What is so important about this particular piece of paper? Why do we continue to document our every action, our every purchase, why do we continually write dates on everything, why do we constantly wrestle with finding better cleansers that meet the National Organic standards and search for Certified Organic ingredients that will reflect a true and reasonable price for a really great tasting Deli item? Once we start asking about the whys, we remember: we do this because having a confident shopping experience is meaningful to our members, knowing that we have already gone through all these procedures every day to make certain that what we put on our shelves is good enough for our members to put on their shelves. We do it to keep faith with the farmers and producers that supply us with Certified Organic products. We believe our certification provides our members, employees, and community a deeped understanding of the importance of Certified Organic as a way of providing the best quality product for a fair price. And we do it because it maintains a transparent and accountable method for products to adhere to a standard of quality that has yet to be duplicated. This is why the Wedge is Certified Organic.