Washington Post Report Questions Integrity of Organic Labeling Practices
“Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest segment of the food industry,” claim Washington Post writers Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton in a July 3, 2009, investigative report alleging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its officials with the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) have diluted organic regulations in response to “corporate firepower.” The article states that since its inception in 2002, the list of synthetics permitted in organic products has grown to 245 substances from 77, while only one item has ever been removed from the list. “The argument is not whether the non-organics pose a health threat, but whether they weaken the integrity of the federal organic label,” according to the report, which notes that USDA’s Inspector General’s Office is investigating allegations of non-compliance and complaints about the program’s certification practices.
The article examines several cases in which NOSB purportedly acquiesced to corporate interests seeking the “coveted green-and-white ‘USDA Organic’ seal on an array of products,” including baby formula made from synthetic additives and livestock raised on nonorganic fish meal. Although USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has reportedly warned against eroding the organic brand “to where it means nothing,” department officials have tracked a tension between the purity of the label and its success. “As the organic industry matures, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find a balance between the integrity of the word ‘organic’ and the desire for the industry to grow,” NOSB Chair
Jeff Moyer was quoted as saying.
In a related development, the Cornucopia Institute has cited the Washington Post’s “scathing indictment” of NOSB in renewing its campaign to “rehabilitate” the organic program. The institute has called corporate forays into organic dairy farming “a sad aberration,” urging the White House and USDA to “aggressively enforce federal organic regulations that would control abuses occurring in the organic dairy sector.” See The Cornucopia Institute, July 6, 2009.
