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When the first US National Organic Standards went into effect in the fall of 2002, they included certification standards for fruits and vegetables, grain, livestock, marine and freshwater algae, wild-harvested plants, and honey. Missing were any standards for certifying fish or shellfish, making it impossible for these organisms to be ‘organic’in the United States. Not an oversight, this was a decision made a year earlier after heated debated within the USDA’s National Organic Program and among organic producers and certifiers about whether any ‘aquatic animals’ should be considered for organic status. The issue of whether to include standards for certifying fish and shellfish as organic is clearly a dimension of the question what is organic? As Goodman and DuPuis (2002) suggest, this question is not just about how food is grown, but also how it is known. This question is not just about making the process of food …