The Canada Food Inspection Agency did internal spot tests last year and found that nearly 24% of the 178 organic apples they tested contained pesticide residue.

Adrian Humphreys, National Post

It is the authenticity of organic food labelling that forms the core of an excoriating report this month from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Canada’s legislated organic certification process is an invitation for fraud and abuse, the report argues, with consumers paying an often hefty premium for a designation that requires no proof.

In response to the organic industry’s growth, Canada enacted a labelling requirement: Since 2009, products making an organic claim must be certified by an agency accredited by the Canada Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

Not included in that process, however, is mandatory laboratory testing of products that could ensure organic-labelled food is actually farmed without pesticides, leaving the organics industry in the hands of the honour system.

“It amounts to little more than an extortion racket, one that the greediest of mafiosi would envy,” write Mischa Popoff and Patrick Moore in their report released this month by the Winnipeg-based, free-market-friendly think-tank.

The organic certification industry’s “dirty little secret,” they write, is that “organic crops and livestock are not tested in Canada before they are certified, thus making organic certification essentially meaningless.”