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GOURMET NEWS FEBRUARY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 4 Genuine Local Continued from PAGE 1 In December 2016, Local Baskit, a meal kit subscription service owned by Beth Richards of Concord, New Hampshire, be- came Genuine Local's first graduate. Local Baskit had launched in June 2016 using Genuine Local's facility as the base of oper- ations in which Richards packaged all her meal kits. As the business grew, she shifted her attention to cus- tomer service and recipe development, while Genuine Local took on assembling the meal kits. Then in December, Richards relocated her busi- ness to a space that will allow her to ex- pand her offerings to include cooking and nutrition classes. "At lightning speed, she leaped and she landed," Macdonald said. Genuine Local, located in Meredith, New Hampshire, is in the middle of the state, about 40 miles north of the state capital in Concord and about 80 miles west of Port- land, Maine, as the crow flies. It's equipped as a small-scale commercial kitchen with 40-gallon kettles, which is large for a cater- ing kitchen but small for a production fa- cility. "We expect that people will come in and work for a year or two, but then move on as they outgrow what we're here to offer," Macdonald said. "The group that I'm most excited about working with are all the a production facility, whereas ours was set up to be a production facility from the get- go." New brands grew up around that 2010 start, including Our Local Table, which of- fers a trio of onion relishes as well as salsas and spicy Peri Peri sauces, and Old's Cool, a line of three sauces designed for wild game. "They're fat-free and made with gluten-free ingredients with no preservatives or artificial flavors or colors," Macdonald said. Genuine Local is also home to Genuine Local's Bootstraps Program, an a la carte business development program that works by sub- scription and offers assistance with all the myriad problems that people have to solve when they're starting a food business: labeling and nutrition panels, li- censing, market development and recipe development. "For regular business plan- ning, we refer those out. There are simply not enough hours in the day," Macdonald said. "We have some people who are qual- ified to do a variety of types of production, and they're willing to work with people on a freelance basis, so we do make those types of connections as well." "We developed that Bootstraps Program out of recognition that we'd never have been able to do what we've done without the generosity of other people," she added. "It's frankly not rocket science, but there's no manual. We have a really strong com- mitment, with our focus on local, to help people take the next step." GN specialty food producers who need to take the next step." The facility doesn't have a USDA license, so it's not for meat products, and there's no cold chain pro- duction capacity. "We don't do cheese, but we can pretty much work with anybody else," Macdonald said. "It's a very purpose-built facility, so it has a very functional footprint. All of the equipment is on wheels. Every- thing we have is semi-automated, including the bottler and the la- beler. It's all about being the bridge." The 23 producers who are cur- rently sharing the space make a variety of products, including conventional hot pack products and a range of ethnic foods that include a unique West African pepper relish, Ruth's Mustards, Little Acre Gourmet Foods' condiments and Bleuberet's microbatch rel- ishes and jams. Local caterers also use the facility. "Products coming out of here are in distri- bution throughout New Eng- land into upstate New York, as well as pushing down into New York City. We have one cus- tomer that's featured in all of the Eataly stores," McDonald said. "We have another customer that's really happy being able to drive to every single store that carries their product, and that's where they want to be." "We have everything from one company that makes a northern Indian-style egg- plant relish, and that's their only product, to Little Acre Gourmet, which is really pushing to expand their line," she added. "I'm thinking that in three years, we're not going to be big enough for her, but we are for now, and we're very glad." The facility is also home to The Discerning Palate's house brands. They include Swineheart's Signature Sauces, which offers seven flavors of handcrafted, small-batch sauces representing various styles of American barbecue. "We got into the food business as a hobby gone wrong. The kids gave their dad a small smoker for Father's Day about 10 years ago," Macdonald recalls. From that beginning, the Macdonalds started compet- ing in the barbecue circuit and developed their own sauces. "From there, people started want- ing to purchase the sauce, and the company just grew," she said. Once they'd decided to produce the first Swineheart's Signa- ture Sauces on a commer- cial basis, they set up shop in a copacking facility that also rented space on an hourly basis. "It was histor- ically a culinary training program run by the county," Macdonald said. "It was set up as a catering kitchen that transformed into New Program Will Ease Farmers' Transition to Organic Certification The Organic Trade Association (OTA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have devel- oped a new program to help guide farmers transitioning into certified organic agricultural production. Using standards developed by OTA, the National Certified Transitional Pro- gram (NCTP) will provide oversight to ap- proved Accredited Organic Certifying Agents offering transitional certification to producers. This will help ease the transition process to organic, allow farmers to sell their products as certified transitional at a premium price and help encourage more organic production. This announcement is an important step in helping to expand certified organic acreage in the United States. OTA designed the certified transitional program to create a consistent mechanism for certifying agen- cies to document operations' adherence to organic regulations on land in transition to organic status. The new program provides certification and oversight to producers who are in transition to organic. It does not provide standards or criteria for labeling products certified under the program. "The transitional certification program developed by OTA reflects perspectives from across the supply chain, and will pro- vide an on-ramp to producers while safe- guarding organic as the gold standard of food label claims," said Nate Lewis, Farm Policy Director for OTA. "USDA is excited to work with the Organic Trade Association on the National Certified Transitional Program, providing producers with a consistent transitional standard to market their products," said USDA's Agricul- tural Marketing Service Administrator Elanor Starmer. "This program will help those tran- sitioning to organic agriculture, encourage domestic production of organic products, and ultimately support the continued growth of organic agriculture in the United States." In a "Notice to the Trade" published by USDA, the department said the new program "will facilitate the investment in transitional agriculture through a consistent set of rules." Farmers must undergo a rigorous and sometimes challenging transition period of 36 months before they can gain organic cer- tification and market their products as cer- tified organic. This newly created program at USDA will harmonize existing transitional certification programs currently operated by Accredited Certifying Agents and provide a mechanism for additional certifiers to offer this service to new clients. The program is recognized by the USDA Quality Systems Assessment Program, housed within the Agricultural Marketing Service branch. USDA will accredit organic certification agencies that comply with the National Cer- tified Transitional Program criteria, enabling those agencies to conduct certification of producers operating in accordance with the OTA-developed standards. Demand for organic products has contin- ued to grow by double digits every year, far exceeding the domestic supply of organic ingredients. OTA has been engaged in mul- tiple efforts to boost the growth of domestic organic acreage and sees a harmonized transitional certification program overseen by USDA as a critical piece of this compli- cated puzzle. OTA submitted an application to USDA in May 2016 – after over a year of work on behalf of its members through a Transitional task force – to create the transitional certification program, thereby building the foundation for a potential market for transitional products. A transitional product market can offer premi- ums to farmers in transition and assist in the financial barriers that transition poses. The oversight provided by USDA to certi- fying agents offering transitional certification to producers will consist of certifier audits and a uniform transitional production stan- dard for both crop and livestock producers. Farmers will need to prove their land has been free of prohibited substances (synthetic pesticides and fertilizers) for a minimum of 12 months and must follow all other organic production standards to achieve transitional certification, including crop rotation, the fos- tering and conserving of biodiversity, and the avoidance of the use of genetic engineering. Once eligible for organic certification, land can only enter into the transitional certifica- tion program one more time. This provision, unique to the standards developed by OTA, will ensure that transitional certification acts as an effective on-ramp to organic produc- tion rather than a mechanism to create an "organic-light" marketing term. The new program does not include certi- fication of products labeled as "transitional" in the marketplace and is limited only to producers working towards their own or- ganic certification. OTA anticipates working with certifiers, food manufacturers and re- tailers to develop appropriate market-driven guidelines for proper use of the term "tran- sitional" on consumer packaged goods. To streamline roll-out of this new program, USDA will accept applications for the first round from Accredited Certifying Agents through February 28 to gain oversight for the transitional program, and on-site reviews of these certifying agents will occur at their next organic accreditation audit. Further applica- tions will be accepted on an ongoing basis. This program dovetails with USDA's an- nouncement in December of last year that it would expand the reach of the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program to include transitional certification fees. USDA's recent initiatives will bring more opportunity to farmers and handlers across the country, and they represent additional elements of solid federal support for the growth of the organic sector. GN

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