Federal Panel Winnowing Rules for ‘Organic’ Crops : Agriculture: Environmentalists, farmers, processors, consumer advocates and scientists are trying to write standards for crops and livestock.

And you thought organic farming just meant spreading manure instead of commercial fertilizer, using a natural bug killer instead of a factory-made concoction.

Hardly.

Deciding what can be called organic is so complex that the National Organic Standard Board has been working on suggested standards off and on for two years.

The board’s 14 volunteer members hope they are nearly finished, after a six-day marathon session in Santa Fe, N.M. They’ll be able to give the Agriculture Department material to draft regulations on what qualifies food to be sold as organic.

“We’re really having to go crop by crop,” said James Michael Sligh of Greenville, S.C., chairman of the board and head of a nonprofit group that advocates sustainable agriculture. “In order to be useful, these recommendations have to be as specific as they possibly can.”

The environmentalists, farmers, processors, consumer advocates and scientists are also trying to define organically produced livestock--which includes everything from cows to honeybees.

And they are working on standards for labels, canning, certification of farmers, accreditation of agencies that will give the “organic” designation, and biotechnology.

More than 30 state, regional or private organizations certify products as organic. The national guidelines, required in the 1990 farm bill, will assure everyone is using the same basic rules.

USDA officials hope to propose rules in November and have them in place next February.

Organic farming generally means rotating crops and using biological pest controls and proper tilling to protect and nourish the soil while growing crops free of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

It also means raising livestock without using steroids or regular low-level doses of antibiotics and without regularly cooping them up.

Some issues are simple. The law says farms will have to use organic practices for three years before being certified. They will have to keep records of such things as fertilizer application and livestock sources for five years.

Timetables will be tricky. Organic farmers may not use seeds that are treated to prevent them from rotting in the ground. But untreated seeds are hard to come by, so their use will have to be gradually eliminated.

“We recognize currently there is not enough of untreated organic seed of every variety necessary to say this is required tomorrow,” Sligh said. “At the same time, we don’t want to discourage companies from making this type of progress.”

Labeling for processed foods could be contentious. The law says a product can be labeled as organic if 5% of its weight is non-organic. But does that 5% allow for hard-to-find ingredients, or does it mean a box of cereal from organic grain but with non-organic raisins can be labeled as organic?

“The committee recommendation is kind of open-ended now,” said Merrill Clark, a farmer from Cassopolis, Mich., a consumer representative on the board.

Clark also chairs the livestock committee, which is breaking new ground because organic livestock-raising has a relatively short history compared to crops.

It’s one of the more complicated issues, because farmers will have to keep track of each animal, what it ate, and what medicine it received. The 1990 law already resolves one dilemma, though: Farmers will lose their organic certification if they let a sick animal die or suffer by denying it lifesaving antibiotics.

But once saved, the animal no longer is considered organic.

An even more grueling task will come in the fall, when the board comes up with a list of ingredients that may or may not be used in organic farming.

What, for example, will be done about pyrethrum, a plant-based pesticide, and its synthetic forms?

Then there’s biotechnology. The board has so far agreed that genetic engineering isn’t natural, so any product will be have to considered for the national list of approved and prohibited substances.