Organic Views of Nature: the Debate over Organic Certification for Aquatic Animals

W hen the first US National Organic Standards went into effect in the fall of 2002, they included certification standards for fruits and vegetables, grain, livestock, marine and freshwater algae, wild-harvested plants, and honey. Missing were any standards for certifying fish or shellfish, making it impossible for these organisms to be 'organic' in the United States. Not an oversight, this was a decision made a year earlier after heated debated within the USDA's National Organic Program and among organic producers and certifiers about whether any 'aquatic animals' should be considered for organic status. The issue of whether to include standards for certifying fish and shellfish as organic is clearly a dimension of the question what is organic? As Goodman and DuPuis (2002) suggest, this question is not just about how food is grown, but also how it is known. This question is not just about making the process of food production transparent, but instead involves political contestation and knowledge systems. As such, this question is relevant for understanding the social and natural relations of food production and consumption. In this paper, I address some of the socio-natural relations involved in the question what is organic by examining the debate over fish to discern relationships between organic production, and worldviews and values about nature-society. I contextualise these relationships within discussion about the meaning of organic as expressed in debates over conventionalisation and standardisation and their implications for rural identity and livelihoods. Analysis of the USDA aquatic animal debate reveals that participants of the organic movement are conflicted about 'nature': in their defense of organic as different — not just a variant of conventional agriculture — they do not simply defend a non-dualistic view of nature-society, but rather make distinctions about both nature and society that are much more complicated than can be captured by simply labeling them as either dualistic or holistic. In some settings, those in the organic movement may think " the body and the earth are analogous, and food as co-production is the central unifying material and symbolic linkage that bridges and binds the social and the natural together " (Goodman 1999, p. 33). But the fish debate reveals conceptions of nature-society that combine human activity with soil and soil processes while simultaneously