So, going without the thought of selling was much better.  There were many first time vendors there and I found so many new organic products that Botanical Earth may be carrying in the future!  One of my favorite stops was the SimpleFood.com booth.  My goal is to have Botanical Earth offer organic foods besides just bodycare and pet products.  When I met the people behind this fun, vegan friendly business, I knew this was a company my customers would love!  They create the MOST yummy soynut spread butters – peanut & tree nut free – gluten free – vegan – kosher butters.  My favorite was the Cinnamon Sugar – you have to check out their site.

 One of the most distrubing aspects of the show, but as a business I can see the logic (but just don’t agree with it) was the sales pitch of some of the organic producers.  One booth had the most amazing organic garlic I have ever seen – huge monster garlic!  The problem for me was, the first thing out of the guy’s mouth was “And you can compete with domestic farm garlic with this organic garlic” price wise.  The reason? It came from China where the labor is dramatically different – so after growing it and shipping half way across the world, I could sell certified organic garlic for less or equal to what a local, non-certified organic (and probably even organic certified) US farmers would sell theirs for.  That’s just not what organic is about to me, but I can understand the reason why some stores will buy it – it’s bottom line.  Organics are hot because people are boombarded with toxic scares all the time, and are told organics are the only way to go.  I personally think organics are great, but buying naturally grown (not necessarily organic) regionally, or even in the same hemishpere, grown produce is better.  Maybe next time you go to the store, besides looking for the “Organic” label, look for where the product was grown and see if you have options – by spending a few pennies more, you may be able to support a US farmer with organics.

 So where are all the pictures of this show you ask?  Well, when you take your best friend who is an incredible multi-media artisan, and an amazing cook also to a trade show like this, with the likes of the Fancy Foods show upstairs and the All Things Organic show downstairs offering incredible snacks…..accidents tend to happen……did I mention the organic wine at the show was quite tasty?  The camera ended up with some wonderful South American organic coffee and a bit of organic jasmine tea all over it by the time we left – so no pictures except for one I found to torment Michael with……that’s what friends are for right?

Paperwork….paperwork and just a bit more paperwork. That’s all that there seems to be some days. I contacted the people at QAI about a year ago, and they sent all the paperwork for Botanical Earth to get started in having a finished product certified organic. I completely believe I have to put my money where my mouth is and do this. It’s not easy at roughly $2900 per product, yes that is 2 thousand 9 hundred dollar per recipe – any change, and it’s another $1900. So needless to say, I’ll be starting out slowly with only one product at a time.

The biggest delay in starting the certification process is actually having some of our suppliers (previous suppliers I should say) to show documentation of the ingredients being certified organic. A lot of people say their ingredients are organic, but few say “certified” and even less will document with batch numbers that the ingredient is really organic. I was told by one supplier that “Hey, if it’s on the web site that should be good enough for you.” Well, it’s not good enough for certification. I need to prove to QAI that we make products with documented certified organic ingredients, I have to purchase in some really, really big quantities. Quantities like 2500 lbs of coconut oil at a time, so that’s more money …… Is it any wonder only big companies have the certified organic seal on their products?

Well, I will have one product at least by 2007 – that’s my goal and I am sticking to it. Colin has already drawn up the site map for the inspectors to check the shop and to show that our organic ingredients are separate from our non-certified ingredients, and I am writing the protocol for making products to show how we ensure that only organic ingredients are used and not mixed with non-organics when handcrafting our products. A wee bit time consuming, but worth it in the long run.

And then that is just for US certification. For the EU and Japan, it is another application. The product, recipe and ingredient listing is sent to each country for a chemist to review. So I guess I will be in paperwork dreamland for a long time to come…….oh goody.