Challenge to Organic DHA Milk Preempted By OFPA

Ruling that the plaintiff’s claims are preempted by the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), a federal court in California has dismissed a putative class action alleging Danone North America’s Horizon Organic milk is not organic because it contains DHA. Brown v. Danone N. Am. LLC, No. 17-7325 (N.D. Cal., entered May 1, 2018). Noting that the Ninth Circuit has not considered whether the OFPA preempts state law challenges that “call into question whether organic products were properly certified as organic,” the court sided with decisions from the Eighth and Second Circuits holding that such challenges are preempted. “The labels clearly state that the milk is ‘organic’ and that the milk contains DHA, and the labels bear the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic certification logo,” the court found. “The USDA database publicly shows that Horizon Organic milk with DHA is currently certified organic by the USDA, and has been so since 2013.” Accordingly, the court held, the plaintiff’s claims challenged the certification process itself. “There is simply no way to rule in [the plaintiff’s] favor without contradicting the certification decision, and, through it, the certification scheme that Congress enacted in the OFPA,” the court concluded. The court also ruled that the plaintiff could not allege the reliance and economic injury required to establish standing under California law because the product labels “fully disclosed the facts giving rise to [her] claims.”