The Vermont Seal of Quality, which has marked products from maple syrup to eggs for nearly 30 years, is being shelved.
The Burlington Free Press says the program that hands out the oval-shaped seal is monitored so loosely that state Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee has suspended it. Allbee said the program hasn’t been working properly for years, with no inspectors assigned to check out products that carried the seal since the mid-1990s.
Gov. Jim Douglas says the program is not going to be eliminated. It’s going to be rethought.
For now, references to the program have been removed from the state’s Web site.
Not everybody’s happy about the move. Some legislators and candidates for governor defended the program, saying it’s one of the only marketing tools that agriculture economy relies on.