Paddy Doherty, Credibility Tools Manager.
I have done a lot of things before becoming Credibility Tools Manager for the ISEAL Alliance; hotel cook, shipyards stager, beekeeper (one memorable summer), railway conductor, and for the past 30 years, an organic farmer in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. Now that my wife (Elaine Spearing) is teaching organic farming at UBC Farm in Vancouver, we have moved to the city and I work from an apartment that overlooks Kitsilano Beach.
During my 30 years as an organic farmer (my partners of 30 years now manage Dragon Mtn. Farm on their own) I became heavily involved in the Canadian organic movement; eventually leading the process to develop an organic regulation for Canada (the new regulation comes into effect June 30 2009). I found this policy and technical work rewarding, and a break from the physical work of farming, and so applied to join the IFOAM Accreditation Criteria Committee in 2002. My work with IFOAM led me to apply to ISEAL in August 2008.
I like this work–it’s difficult, but I am learning a lot and becoming more confident with the concepts and the different aspects of the social and environmental standards movement. I am used to working within a stakeholder consultation process, so I enjoy (and depend on) the help I receive from the Impacts Code Technical Committees. Coming from an organic farming background, I tend to see things through that lens. This is good in that I still retain the producer prospective; but of course I often overlook the viewpoints of the non-agricultural standards systems. Fortunately, my committees do not let me get away with this for long and the draft Impacts Code reflects the views of a wide range of stakeholders who have an interest in impact assessment.
