The United States and Switzerland signed a formal organic equivalency agreement at the Agriculture Department today. From left are Swiss Ambassador to the U.S. Martin Dahinden; Switzerland Federal Councilor Johann Schneider-Ammann; USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator Anne Alonzo; Agriculture Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden; U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein Susan LeVine, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator Darci Vetter. The agreement specifies that organic products certified in the U.S. or Switzerland may be sold as organic in either country. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

U.S. and Swiss officials today signed an agreement that allows organic products certified in the United States or Switzerland to be sold as organic in either country, beginning Friday.

At a ceremony at the Agriculture Department headquarters, Johann Schneider-Ammann, a federal councilor for Switzerland and the country’s vice president, said his country looks forward not only to exporting organic products such as chocolate and muesli, but also to importing organic foods from the United States because Switzerland is only 60 percent self-sufficient in food.

Why should a fruit or vegetable be grown with chemical fertilizers if an “excellent” one can be grown organically?, Schneider-Ammann asked.

Darci Vetter, the U.S. chief agriculture negotiator and a former USDA deputy undersecretary for food and foreign agricultural services, noted that her father had 288 acres on the family farm in Nebraska certified as organic in 1978 and the next year opened a grain cleaning and processing business.

In the program for the signing ceremony, USDA noted that the United States, with more than $39 billion in sales in 2014, is the largest organic market in the world, but that in 2013 Swiss consumers had the highest per capita consumption of organic products.

“Forty years later the organic industry in the U.S. and Switzerland are thriving. It’s a personal honor to be here,” Vetter noted.

Schneider-Ammann and Agriculture Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden signed the “U..S.-Swiss Organic Equivalency Arrangement,” as the agreement is officially known.

“This arrangement eliminates the need for organic operators to have separate organic certification to both U.S. and Swiss standards, which avoids a double set of fees, inspections and paper work,” said USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator Anne Alonzo, who presided over the ceremony.

“This new arrangement has been three years in the making, and we thank and congratulate officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for their successful collaborative efforts," said Laura Batcha, executive director and CEO of the Organic Trade Association, who was present at the ceremony.

Batcha also noted that, according to Bio Suisse, the umbrella organization representing the Swiss organic sector, organic retail sales in 2013 in Switzerland jumped 12 percent from the previous year, reaching almost $2 billion, with the biggest increases in meat, fruit, processed products and cheese sales.

“The fact that Switzerland is not a part of the U.S.-EU equivalency agreement since it is not a member of the EU, has been a bottleneck in organic trade between the U.S, the EU and Switzerland,” OTA added in a news release.

USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Phil Karsting offers a toast with California wines. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

“Swiss organic food makers often source organic ingredients from the EU, which are then processed and sent to the United States, and food processors in the EU and the U.S. frequently use Swiss organic ingredients, such as organic chocolate, organic milk powder, or organic dried mustard,” OTA said.

“The new arrangement will facilitate those transactions and open new opportunities for organic farmers and processors on both sides of the Atlantic.”

After the signing ceremony, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Phil Karsting offered a toast with organic wine from California.

A light lunch included sandwiches with organic ingredients, hummus, Swiss cheese and Emmental cheese.

The wines were Bonterra sauvignon blanc from organic grapes grown in Lake and Mendocino counties and chardonnay from the Handley Estate Vineyard in the Anderson Valley.

A light lunch included hummus, Swiss cheese and Emmental cheese. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)