Organic Shrimp... What's in a word?

I've been asked several times by people if our product will be organic.  At this time, in the U.S., the USDA has not come up with the regulations for a description for an organic shrimp.  Now, that isn't a bad thing, and it isn't that they aren't working on it.  They have been working on it for quite some time.  When you think of all of the variables that could go into this decision you can understand why the qualifiers haven't been decided on.

If you take a look at everything our vegetable and meat products have to go through in order to be considered organic, we can't just put shrimp/prawns into that same type of category.  If we are looking at the pond type farming, we have large open ponds that are around an acre each.  Every year those ponds are drained in the fall, they sit empty for about 4-5 months, then they are refilled with mostly well water in the spring.  So think about what an organic farmer has to do in order to get their land certified as organic.  If I remember correctly, it's about a 2 year process.  It would be hard for a pond farmer to get it done in the same way.  The food we provide would have to be certified.  Well, most of the food we provide our shrimp is about 80-90% grain.  So our grain providers would have to be organic, or you would think.  Then the other 10% that the particular producer uses would also need to be.  But you can see where the USDA is having the problem.

On the other hand, there is an international organization that has organic standards for shrimp.  Most of their standards are how are the shrimp raised, treated.... they can't be sold live, etc...  It is a basis for shrimp being treated humanely.  Please, do not get me wrong, I think this is very very important.  And I think most farmers would agree.  The better we treat our product the better quality we will have.  But does this actually make it organic?

I feel as if I would break my customers trust by receiving the Organic Certification from the International Organization I mentioned.   Although the treatment of my shrimp is important through all stages, I don't know if this is what we consider Organic to be here in the U.S.

But how important is it to have that label for customers?  It doesn't mean it is chemical free as we would expect.   So what is in that name, the elusive "Organic" label that we search out?