By Eric Wenberg, executive director

As we move closer to spring, work is ramping up on the Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance (SSGA) ATP grant to brand and grow identity-preserved (IP) crops to customers abroad.

As such, SSGA staff and board members visited Ottawa, Canada, Feb. 18-19 to meet with and attend training for the overseas technical advisers SSGA has hired to promote IP abroad. The group covered logistics and financial or compliance matters, but also dug deep on what SSGA can accomplish abroad and what the technical advisers should do.

And what is that?

Promote exports of specialty soya and grains by adding to U.S. capabilities in market development by:

• Working to brand the U.S. as a quality origin for IP crops.
• Coordinating with and pushing opportunities with all the commodity organizations active in exporting.
• Reporting on IP and transportation issues, and answering your questions about SSGA and the markets

Much of our Ottawa meeting centered around our working plan for the ATP grant. Additionally, our advisers reported to SSGA opportunities to explore. Those advisers, Alyson Segawa, North Asia; Hoa Huynh, South East Asia; and Gene Philhower, Europe, also spent a great deal of the meetings learning about SSGA and our goals as an organization and our goals through the grant.

One topic we couldn’t escape in Canada was traceability, which was the word of the week. Agromeris’ Peter Golbitz ran everyone through their paces about the great detail needed to make an IP transaction work. Our transportation analyst Bruce Abbe taught everyone about container shipping and what we need to watch for to help businesses export. Member volunteers Rob Prather, Global Processing, Sean Mulford, Agniel Commodities, Darwin Rader, Zeeland Farms, and Curt Petrich, HCI, added context from their business experience.

After our meetings wrapped, I, along with Petrich, SSGA’s chairman, stayed behind in the cold weather to meet with agencies and allies in Canada. Of note was our learning about Canada’s grain inspection system where they use a 2nd-party sampler system that monitors companies as they take samples to be sent to labs for testing. This substantially cuts downs on their costs to follow rules regulating control of pests and diseases. Canada takes its quality and safety issues seriously and is confident that 2nd-party testing works. Canada has recognized its rural roots and tried to make it simpler for companies to comply with rules.

SSGA received great support from the USDA FAS office at the embassy in Ottawa, and looks forward to returning to Canada soon to liaison with its businesses and officials active with food variety field crops and identity preservation.

The next ATP implementation phase is to unveil our global branding and research contractor. As that data becomes available, we’ll keep you informed as we ramp up activities.

By Bruce Abbe, SSGA strategic advisor for trade and transportation

While in Japan for the U.S. Soy Buyers Outlook Conference, Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance (SSGA) representatives met with officials from the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service/Office of Agriculture Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and the Deputy Director of the Food Labeling Division of the Japanese government’s Consumer Affairs Agency (CAA). The mission: to get a better understanding of the newly revised Japan genetic engineered (GE) food labeling law that gained final approval in March 2019.

The new labeling regime will require zero GMO presence for any food product to be labeled “Non-GMO” once it goes into effect by April 2023. However, there is a new, voluntary identity-preserved (IP) category for labeling that is to be established under the revised system.

SSGA members who export food soybeans or grains to Japan will want to follow implementation steps for the new system, and maintain communication with their Japanese food manufacturing customers who will be on point for complying with the new system.

Here are key provisions and changes:

• Eight crops – soybeans, corn, potatoes, canola, cottonseed, alfalfa, sugar beets, papaya and 33 processed food items (see JA 71210) continue to be subject to mandatory labeling, as before. Products containing five percent or more GE components must be labeled for having GE content.
• Currently and in the past, products containing less than five percent GE components (which are unintentionally co-mingled with the product) can be labeled as “non-GE.” As a common industry practice, most U.S. food soybean exports to Japan have needed to meet the European standard of 99.1 percent non-GE – i.e., no more than 0.9 percent of unintended GMO content due to adventitious presence. Under the new law, to be labeled as “non-GE” or “Non-GMO” the product must have zero GMO presence.
• To minimize the risk of trade disruption, a new labeling language category for “Identity-preserved products” (identity-preserved to avoid commingling of any GMO content) containing no more than five percent GE components is to be established.
• Labeling of “Identity-preserved” and “Non-GE” products is voluntary. Companies may choose to not include the label language, unless the products have above five percent GE, when it must be labeled as such.
• The onus and chief responsibility for compliance will be on the food manufacturers. It will not be directly on food soy, corn and ingredient export suppliers to the food manufacturers.
• However, to meet requirements to use the new “IP” label, it is assumed that the food manufacturer importers will have identity-preserved handling procedure requirements and their own testing requirements that their suppliers will need to meet.
• The Japan Consumers Affairs Agency (CAA) is in the process of drafting the testing methodology, which will be critical for U.S. exporters to be aware of. The CAA Deputy Director of Labeling Division advised SSGA that the public will have a chance to comment on the testing methodology after it is released for comments in the near future.
• The labeling will consist of “text” language in Japanese on the product label, much like the normal mandate ingredient content labeling. It will not be a “logo” type design label.
• CAA issued a guidance document last April that advised that other language on products labels that might have multiple interpretations that could confuse consumers should be avoided (such as “Almost free of GE corn”).
• The new rules did not stipulate that imported, processed products that have other non-GMO identification marketing labels (such as the “Non-GMO Project” label) can’t be used. However, the product must still contain the required text language in Japanese on the product. Food manufacturers, one assumes, will need to make a determination that whatever they put on the product will not confuse consumers in the regulators’ eyes.
• The USDA Foreign Agriculture Service issues a Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) Report on the Japanese labeling revisions. Go here to view that report.