From: "deelusbybeekeeper" <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 14:00:57 -0700
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Organic Standards & line by line

Hi to all on Biological Beekeeping

An interesting thing has happened! Received a very important fax concerning
the NOP.

Interesting in that it should happen after organic regulation changes are
posted for industry to read on beesource.com and discussion starts!

However I am glad to receive the following news:

1. The organic regulation changes newly posted on beesource.com have now
been thrown out!

2. At the NOSB meeting in Wisconson (just happened), a Honoey Task Force has
been appointed!!1 There will be four openings on this task force.

3. NOP said the Task Force will submit a draft in October for publication
(Federal Register). If they blow us off (their task force blows industry
off I interpret here), we can submit our own draft!!!

More soon to follow I am sure & I will certainly keep everyone posted on
events.

Since we can submit our own draft if we don't like theirs, & I feel we will
be the ones doing the work, then I suggest we continue to go through the
thrown out regulation changes on the organic program, especially since they
are so close to the ones in force in Europe now, and weed out what we cannot
live with for biological/organic beekeeping, and write what we can live with
concerning a good clean biological system, without the use of various drugs,
chemicals, essential oils and acids, that is slow death killing our bees.

We cannot have a standby draft to submit if one is not worked on! My husband
and I will be writing a draft and will submit a proposal like we did in 1998
either way based on field management we have lived through to get to where
we are holding to zero tolerance, but I would not want to erroneously
exclude information or put in wording that could help someone else, just
because we keep our bees in a different region and do things a little
differently.

We need to make sure the policy written while holding to zero tolerance is
workable for as many as possible, and not used as a club to keep competition
out. The policy needs to be written so those wanting to keep bees for clean
honey will have a chance to do so, realistically. I feel that should include
both small scale beekeepers (1-49 colonies) as well as large scale
beekeepers (300 plus colonies).

An example of this would be a point Clay brought out! Some beekeepers might
have to provide water, as they don't have access on large ranches to same
(like we do), and just that little thing - water! could keep some beekeepers
held back detrimentally or out of the equation.

Yes line by line comment and discussion needs to continue. Then when the
time comes, if it would help, I can post our reply via wordpad to Barry so
he can post for all to read on biobee, so others can see format to write in
and get ideas for writing their own replys.

I am glad the NOP has backed off now! Someone must be watching!!! This is
good.

Dee