Advocates Publish Guide to Bypass Federal Agency
The Story: A Quick Overview
In 1990, Congress passed legislation charging the USDA with protecting ethical organic farmers and consumers from fraud. They have willfully failed in that responsibility.
Factory farm livestock production, soilless/hydroponic produce, and fraudulent imports have polluted the organic marketplace.
OrganicEye has published a “cheat sheet” enabling organic shoppers to identify the very best/authentic organic food — supplanting USDA oversight.
Eaters can use certifier names (required by law on all packaging) to identify the top 10 certifiers that refuse to sell-out our values and that guarantee authentic organic offerings.
OrganicEye encourages farmers, businesses, and consumers to switch their patronage to the most ethical certifiers and hopes this will cause others to reform their practices.
LA FARGE, WIS. — One of the nation’s leading nonprofit advocacy groups supporting organic agriculture and food production, OrganicEye, after years of trying to remediate corruption at the USDA’s National Organic Program, has said that it is now advising shoppers to no longer universally trust federal oversight.
OrganicEye, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group that is best known as an organic industry watchdog, recently released a shoppers’ guide listing 10 top USDA-accredited certifiers that have taken it upon themselves to judiciously enforce both the spirit and the letter of federal law governing organics.
“In 1990, Congress charged the USDA with harmonizing and enforcing a single standard that consumers and eaters could depend on when shopping for organic food,” said Mark A. Kastel, OrganicEye’s Executive Director. “But the agency has willfully failed, and many of the 40 domestic and 32 international certifiers they oversee have accepted huge sums from their ‘clients,’ allowing practices that we contend are in blatant violation of federal law — with the USDA intentionally looking the other way.”
Organic farmers, along with organizations representing both consumers and agricultural producers, have long complained about the USDA “kowtowing” to agribusiness interests by allowing industrial practices that they allege clearly violate regulatory language and the enabling statute itself, the Organic Foods Production Act.
Over the past two decades, the USDA has allowed giant livestock factories to dominate organic dairy, meat, and egg production, as well as allowing certification of industrial-scale operations producing organic fruits and vegetables (with a growing percentage being produced in sealed greenhouses with plant roots in liquid fertilizer solution instead of in carefully organically curated fertile soil as is required by law).
“Legitimate US family-scale organic farms are increasingly being squeezed out of the market by these illegitimate industrialized practices — by which most conventional food is produced — along with a growing dossier of major fraud discovered in imported commodities which make up much of the food in the organic marketplace,” added Kastel.
The OrganicEye guide instructs shoppers to start local, where its researchers have found virtually no fraud or misrepresentation, and then to check food labels in stores for the federally required identity of certifiers.
“If a product is certified by one of the top 10 organizations, buyers can be assured that it is not coming from a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) or “factory farm,” which oftentimes manage many thousands of dairy cows or even up to a million laying hens,” stated Kastel. “And they can be sure that the nutrient density of their food is derived from a healthy and unique soil microbiota (a foundational principle of organic agriculture), not nitrogen from conventional soymeal mixed with water and synthetic plant nutrients.”
OrganicEye considers three of the largest certifiers to be “bad actors” and has filed formal legal complaints against California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), Oregon Tilth, and Florida Organic Growers (FOG).
The organic watchdog has accused all three organizations of violating federal law and USDA guidance by intermingling their certification activities with lobbying, marketing, and industry promotion, as well as creating conflicts of interest by accepting money from their “clients” over and above the certification fees, a practice which is specifically prohibited.
Despite the well-documented legal complaints prepared by OrganicEye researchers, including strong evidentiary material, late on Friday evening, May 17 (after 13 and seven months, respectively) the USDA dismissed the charges against Oregon Tilth and charges against Florida Organic Growers and their subsidiary, Quality Certification Services (QCS), saying, “Our investigation did not find any apparent violations.”
The investigation into CCOF, in response to a complaint documenting hundreds of thousands of dollars in what OrganicEye calls “payola” paid by multibillion-dollar agribusinesses such as Driscoll’s, Grimmway Farms (Cal-Organics/Bunny/Luv), and Taylor Farms (Earthbound), remains open after a year and a half.
“Before the USDA took over organic regulatory oversight, we mostly had independent farmer-led certifiers that we knew and trusted,” said Alexis Baden-Mayer, a Washington-based attorney with decades of experience as political director of the Organic Consumers Association.
Baden-Mayer continued, “We are now going ‘back to the future,’ depending more on the certifiers than on the USDA since they have failed to enforce the universal high standards that Congress intended.”
OrganicEye contends that many current organic food brands chose legacy certifiers, who now practice what the organization considers to be questionable ethics, before there was a discernible shift in the certifier’s moral compass — and before OrganicEye researchers did their study.
“While they may have started as farmer-led certification programs in the 1970s and 80s, built by farmers and ranchers who wanted to illustrate their commitment and build credibility with customers,” said OrganicEye’s Kastel, “many have now morphed into multimillion-dollar business enterprises certifying the production models of multibillion-dollar corporate agribusinesses.”
OrganicEye hopes that, along with using the buyers’ guide to make discerning purchasing decisions when shopping, consumers/eaters will reach out to their favorite brands to encourage them to switch if they are not already certified by one of the top certifiers.
“We want these businesses to stand with the family farm community,” Kastel noted. “And retaining customer loyalty is a powerful incentive.”
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In addition to the specific violations of law alleged in the OrganicEye legal complaints against CCOF, Oregon Tilth, and FOG, the farm policy research group points out that many of what they call the “ethically-challenged” certifiers are members of the industry’s powerful corporate lobby group, the Organic Trade Association (OTA).
They contend the optics are troubling since the USDA-accredited certifiers, all independent business entities acting as agents for the US government, should be independent arbiters and impartial referees, ensuring compliance with the organic federal standards.
OrganicEye also says it is “inexplicable” as to why the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) would become the largest funder of the trade association representing the multimillion dollar certification industry, the Accredited Certifiers Association (ACA), when, as an example, annual revenues at CCOF alone are in the range of $25 million per annum.
OrganicEye has long contended that the NOP has an entirely too cozy relationship with the certifiers. Congress specifically entrusted the NOP with the responsibility of regulating and auditing (the accreditation process) to make sure these private businesses carried out the “people’s business” in a fair and evenhanded manner.
“It’s no coincidence that of the 10 heroes in the certification business, none of them are OTA members,” said Kastel. “Although they’ve tried to create the illusion of an umbrella group representing all segments of the organic industry, the OTA has virtually no farmers as members — the corporate membership generally buys from farmers and sells to consumers. Whose interests are the OTA, and their certifier-members, really representing?”
NOTE: If a brand is not certified by one of the top organizations identified by OrganicEye, it does not necessarily mean the product comes from a livestock factory, hydroponic warehouse, or an untrustworthy importer — but it does mean that organic consumers need to do their homework and not take the USDA organic seal for granted.
The post USDA Organic Certification “Untrustworthy” appeared first on OrganicEye.
