Stephanie Strom, “Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?,” The New York Times, July 7, 2012
“The fact is, organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food
and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store,”
writes Times correspondent Stephanie Strom in this July 7, 2012, article about
perceived conflicts of interest on the National Organic Standards Board
(NOSB). According to Strom, who tracks the consolidation of organic brands
under larger corporations, “[t]he industry’s image—contented cows grazing
on the green hills of family-owned farms—is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather,
pure marketing. Big Food, it turns out, has spawned what might be called Big
Organic.”
Strom argues that Big Organic has “come to dominate” the 15-member NOSB,
which determines the national list of nonorganic ingredients permitted
in “certified organic” products. In particular, she claims that some seats
reserved for farmers or scientific experts have gone to corporate executives
or other representatives from large organic food processors with a stake in
promoting their own production methods. As a result, the owners of some
smaller concerns have reportedly accused the board of diluting the certification
standards by continuing to approve new nonorganic substances, such
as carrageenan or docosahexzenoic acid algae oil (DHA), that are allegedly
unnecessary in organic products. “At first, the list was largely made up of thing
like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like
organic bread,” notes Strom. “Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances
are on the list, up from 77 in 2002.”
Meanwhile, the expansion of the national list has apparently caught the attention of groups like the Cornucopia Institute, which recently published a paper titled “The Organic Watergate” and filed complaints about NOSB’s composition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Inspector General. But USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan has since refuted these claims, telling Strom that the organic sector’s general growth—as opposed to specific corporate interests—has driven the national list decisions as new products are offered to consumers. “The list is really very small,” she said. “It’s really very simplistic and headline-grabbing to throw out these sorts of critiques, but when you get down into the details, there are usually very rational and important reasons for the actions the board has taken.”
