The Consumer Council is calling on the government to create laws to ensure local organic produce is the real deal.

Vice chairman of the Council's publicity and community relations committee professor Ron Hui Shu-yuen said without such regulations, consumers are at the mercy of unscrupulous vendors falsely claiming their produce to be organic when in fact it is not.

"The difficulty for consumers is they cannot tell whether a product is organic or of the conventional type based on their appearance or even by chemical analysis. The only way they can differentiate is through a labeling system," he said.

Calling for legislation to govern the production, certification and labeling of organic foods, Hui added, "The European Union, the USA, Australia and Japan have already introduced legislation on organic food so we are lagging behind."

According to a recent study conducted by the Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre, only 14 out of 149 vegetable stalls were able to produce organic certification.

Hui said the temptation to misrepresent produce was great because organic foods could be sold for at least twice the price, with the average price of vegetables at less than HK$10 a catty (about 600g) versus HK$20 to HK$25 a catty for organics.

Consumers should be on the look out for marketing claims that fall short of organic, such as "wild, natural, no chemical fertilizer" and "use of compost," because even if those claims are factual they are insufficient to qualify a product as organic.

According to Professor Jonathan Wong Woon-chung of the Baptist University's Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre, simply using compost to grow vegetables does not make it organic because organic farming is a holistic production system that does not use synthetic products such as pesticides, fertilizers or growth hormones whether it is growing crops or rearing livestock.

He added some vendors could be ignorant of what constitutes organic foods, but may view them as just another promotional tool to attract shoppers.

"Hong Kong produces two to four tons of organic food per day while the daily consumption is at 1,760 tons per day with the mainland making up the lion's share," he said.

According to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, there were 320 organic farms in Hong Kong as of February this year while 72 local producers have been certified by the Hong Kong Organic Resource Center.

China Daily

(HK Edition 05/15/2010 page1)