Certified Organic Produce Loopholes

I just had a chef come into the store and buy some organic produce from me. He decided to share with me a he had learnt from a 2 year organic farming course he had studied recently.

As the story goes, a certified organic banana farmer in Coffs Harbour owned a 1 hectare property and had a brother, that also owned a farm but had 10+ hectares - non certified.

The brother with the non-certified farm decided he would brand his bananas as certified organic, by basically funneling then through his other brothers certification.

The short of it was that they were picked up by the relevant governing bodies and fined $75,000 for their efforts. The fine, however, pales in comparison to the estimated $500,000 the farmer made from the crop going into the community as certified organic.

Apparently, his words upon getting caught were "where do I sign...". Slippery huh.

It really takes no genius to work out that for small sum of 75k and no criminal record the banana farmer in Coffs Harbour, who is not certified, would be likely to commit the same offence in the next harvest.

When are the certified governing bodies going to get serious?

Andrew