Organic Versus "Organic": The Corruption of a Label
from The Ecologist (U.K. Environmental Magazine) July/August 1998

by: Ben Lilliston & Ronnie Cummins

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) did its best to quietly set new
legally-binding national standards for organic food late last year. The
agency previewed the proposed federal regulations to the press on the
Wednesday before the national holiday Thanksgiving, playing down any
potential controversy. Then the recommended rules were made public on
December 16, just prior to the Christmas holidays. The rules themselves
were released in the form of 600 pages of legal speak--so dense and
technical as to be unintelligible to the average citizen. Although a number
of food activists had predicted months earlier that the USDA's organic
regulations would likely try to water-down the current tougher standards
upheld by the nation's 40 non-governmental and state organic certifiers, as
the lengthy document began to be decoded, shockwaves spread through the
organic industry.

Deeply embedded in the government's proposed Organic Rule are over 60 major
"deal breakers" that threaten to undermine the entire philosophy,
integrity, and longstanding practices of the organic community. Organic
industry analysts were stunned that the USDA and the Clinton administration
disregarded nearly every policy proposal made in the previous five years by
the official advisory board in charge of making recommendations--the
National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). Among the more controversial
proposals were to allow under the mandatory "USDA Organic" label the use of
genetic engineering, nuclear irradiation, toxic sewage sludge, intensive
confinement of farm animals, and a host of other conventional factory farm
agricultural practices. If degraded rules become institutionalized as
federal law, the United States will gain the dubious distinction of having
the lowest organic standards in the world.

Moreover, the rules as presently written will give the USDA a monopoly over
the word "organic" and make it illegal for organic certifiers and producers
to set higher standards than the minimum standards dictated by the USDA. As
groups such as the Pure Food Campaign and Sustain pointed out, the December
16 regulations would constitute nothing less than an "unfriendly takeover"
of the nation's rapidly-growing $4 billion organic food industry.

The numerous loopholes and provisions in the rules would open the door for
large-scale industrial agribusiness to overwhelm an alternative food system
largely composed of small farmers, retailers, and processors.

As the word began to spread in late-December and early January on the
USDA's proposed rules, consumers responded en masse. SOS (Save Organic
Standards) and Keep Organic Organic flyers and posters were
distributed to consumer co-ops, farmers markets, and natural food stores
throughout the country exhorting consumers to tell the USDA to withdraw the
organic rules. The internet became a major organizing tool as tens of
thousands submitted comments through the USDA's website. Hundreds of
protestors, both farmers and consumers, rallied and at times disrupted USDA
public hearings on the organic rules in Texas, Iowa, Washington, and New
Jersey. A steady flow of critical letters, faxes, and emails became a
torrent. Before the storm subsided at the end of official public comment
period on April 30, the USDA had been hammered with an unprecedented
220,000 comments, 99% of which roundly denounced the agency's new
definitions and rules.

USDA head Dan Glickman admitted to the St. Louis Post Dispatch on March 26,
that "This is probably the largest public response to an
(Agriculture Department) rule in modern history." In fact the response was
20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

In the same St. Louis Dispatch article, a spokeswoman for the powerhouse
National Food Processors Association (NFPA), Regina Hildwine, categorized
consumer and industry critics of the proposed rules as "true believers who
seem to be on a holy war" against the USDA. In a news story published March
23 by Reuters, Hildwine emphasized that the USDA's proposed rules (vocally
supported by three of the Clinton-Gore administration's favorite trade
associations--the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the NFPA, and the
Biotechnology Industry Organization) have nothing to do with the issues or
concerns of consumers. As Hildwine put it, "Organic does not mean safer.
Organic does not mean healthier."

On May 8, Glickman announced that, although the USDA will not completely
withdraw the proposed rules, the agency will carefully consider the
comments received and then resubmit a revised Final Rule later this year or
in 1999. In what appears to be a significant turnaround from previous
comments, Glickman stated "Biotechnology, irradiation, and biosolids...
neither fit current organic practices nor meet current consumer
expectations about organics, as the comments made clear." Analysts warn
however that Glickman's ban on biotech, sludge, and irradiation under the
organic label is not necessarily a permanent ban, as evidenced by the
emphasis in his May 8 statement on "current" organic practices and
"current" consumer expectations. Shortly before the end of the comment
period, the nation's biotechnology leader, Monsanto, advised the USDA to
back off temporarily on trying to include gene-altered products under the
organic label for a three-year period and then to try again.

What's at Stake? A Booming $4 Billion Industry

The massive grassroots backlash against the USDA's proposed organic rules
highlights the recent dramatic growth of the organic food sector. Several
million US households (out of a total of 90 million) now buy significant
amounts of organic food every week from one of several thousand retail
outlets. The organic food industry has grown to over $4.2 billion a year,
expanding 20% a year since 1990. In a national poll published in February
1997, conducted on behalf of the Swiss-based biotech and pharmaceutical
giant Novartis, 54% of American consumers said they would like to see
"organic" food production become the dominant form of agriculture in the
United States.

Even many conventional supermarket chains have been forced by consumer
demand to start offering at least limited lines of organic foods in their
stores. According to a survey by the Food Marketing Institute, 75% of food
industry senior management believe that organic and natural foods are
becoming an important trend.

Why is organic food consumption growing so rapidly, not only in the US, but
in the rest of the industrialized world? Of course the answer is the
increasing concern over food safety. The handful of transnational food,
chemical, and biotech corporations who dominate world agriculture from
field to plate are increasingly offering food that is artificial,
contaminated, and adulterated. Large-scale agribusiness views the organic
market as a genuine threat to maximizing profits. Their global game plan is
to drive several billion "inefficient" small and medium-sized farmers and
peasants from the land, replace these family farmers with high-tech
chemical and biotech food factories, and then serve up these factory farm
food consumables to a mass of indoctrinated and corporatized consumers.

For a number of years this game plan seemed to be moving ahead on schedule.
But a body of mounting public health concerns, an apparently unending
series of well-publicized food scares, food poisoning epidemics, and
finally mad cow disease have profoundly affected consumer consciousness and
altered market conditions.

As the majority of consumers and concerned parents now understand, cheap
industrial food has hidden costs. Not only does factory farming destroy the
environment, impoverish rural communities, inflict unnecessary cruelty on
farm animals, and contaminate the water supply, but the end product itself
is inevitably contaminated. Routinely contained in nearly every bite or
swallow of non-organic industrial food are antibiotics and other animal
drug residues, pathogens, feces, chemicals, toxic sludge, rendered animal
protein, genetically modified organisms, chemical additives,
irradiation-derived radiolytic chemical by-products, and a host of other
hazardous allergens and toxins. The BSE catastrophe in Europe is only the
most dramatic example of an increasing global trend: consumers are more and
more anxious about the food they are eating and serving to their families.

Americans suffer from a literal epidemic of food poisoning (over 80 million
cases per year), immune and reproductive system disorders, obesity, heart
disease, and food and water-related cancers and diseases. Over 80% of
American consumers now consistently express concern over pesticide,
hormone, and antibiotic residues; fecal or bacterial contamination; as well
as the health hazards posed by genetically engineered products such as the
Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH or rBST).

Millions more are concerned about the animal cruelty, environmental
hazards, and adverse economic impacts on small family farmers of the giant
beef feedlots, corporate hog farms, and massive chicken and poultry
operations. For all of these reasons, millions of US consumers are turning
toward organic food. A recent survey commissioned by Environmental Media
Services in Washington, D.C. found that: one-third of Americans say they
buy organic food regularly, while 40% buy organic at least a few times a
year; and 85 percent would support national organic standards, but oppose
labeling as "organic" food that which has been genetically modified, grown
with toxic sludge, irradiated, or treated with antibiotics;

The USDA's blatant attempts to degrade current high organic standards-
standards upheld by the nation's 40 private and state organic certification
bodies--are consistent with the agency's track record as a staunch defender
of factory farm style food production. For decades the
USDA has vigorously promoted the latest technologies developed by
large-scale agribusiness and biotechnology corporations, from DDT and
animal antibiotics, to genetically engineered hormones, seeds, and crops.
Several billion pounds of toxic chemicals are applied to American farmlands
and pastures annually, while an estimated 24 million acres were planted
with transgenic or genetically-altered crops in 1997--up from 6 million
acres in 1996.

Pressure on the USDA to weaken pre-existing organic standards has come from
several government agencies as well as powerful trade associations such as
the National Food Processors Association, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, and the Grocery Manufacturers of America. Advocates for the
immediate or eventual inclusion of genetic engineering and other factory
farm technologies has come from the U.S. Trade Representative office as
well as the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Science and
Technology's presidential advisory committee includes biotech giant
Monsanto's senior vice-president for public policy, Virginia Weldon.

Lobbying to allow residential and industrial sewage sludge as fertilizer
under the USDA Organic label has came from the nation's major toxic
polluters as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, which has long
been a strong advocate of the practice of disposing of what they
euphemistically call "biosolids" by dumping them--often covertly or
semi-covertly--on farmlands and pastures. In a similar vein, the Food and
Drug Administration and the nuclear industry have been pushing for
wholesale nuclear irradiation of meat and other foods. And finally, the
Clinton administration has pandered to their friends and donors in the
biotech industry by enthusiastically approving every genetically engineered
product presented to it (the total is now 33) for commercialization.

The USDA until recently was reluctant to get involved with organic
food--including efforts in 1990 to stop the US Congress from passing the
Organic Foods Production Act. The discomfort the agency feels is largely
due to political and economic considerations. At a public hearing earlier
this year, a USDA official privately admitted to activists that the Clinton
administration is faced with the awkward political dilemma of excluding
agricultural practices under the organic label which are routinely utilized
in conventional industrial agricultural. How can Washington claim that
chemical-intensive agriculture, intensive confinement of farm animals, and
genetic engineering are perfectly safe, and then permanently ban these
practices under the federal organic label? How can the White House try to
force controversial foods on the European market, for example
hormone-tainted beef, using the hammer of the World Trade Organization, and
then not allow these same foods to enjoy the USDA Organic seal of approval?

This public relations and trade dilemma was revealed in a confidential memo
reported in Mother Jones magazine in April 1998. The USDA memo said: "Few
if any existing [organic] standards permit GMOs [genetically manipulated
organisms], and their inclusion could affect the export of U.S. Grown
organic product. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
and the Foreign Agricultural Service [USDA divisions] are concerned that
our trading partners will point to a USDA organic standard that excludes
GMOs as evidence of the department's concern about the safety of
bioengineered commodities."

The National Organics Standards Board (NOSB), mandated by Congress in 1990
to set up a "National List" of substances allowed in organic food, was
relatively free of these political dilemmas. They passed on to the USDA
tough standards which had the full support of the organic food industry and
consumer groups.

Now, as part of their proposed rules, the USDA is trying to usurp control
over the NOSB. The 1990 law says that the USDA can not add any substances
to the list without NOSB approval. But the USDA internal memo published in
Mother Jones describes the agency's plans to take away the statutory power
of the NOSB to decide what is synthetic or natural, and what is allowed or
prohibited under the organic label. The USDA claims that since the word
"list" is written at times in lowercase letters in the 1990 statutes, the
Law then allows the USDA to add substances to the list without the board's
approval. White House lawyers also propose that the NOSB's statutory
control over the National List is possibly "unconstitutional." But legal
experts, as well as the authors of the 1990 National Organic Food
Production (OFPA), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Rep. Peter DeFazio
(D-OR), deny the USDA's interpretation of the 1990 law.

The USDA found the NOSB's recommendations problematic and decided to ignore
or twist the NOSB's recommendations in the following important areas:

* The proposed rules allow the use of antibiotics in meat and poultry
production. Recently, scientists around the world have voiced their
concerns that farmers using antibiotics in chickens, cattle, and fruit
orchards are creating drug-resistent bacteria and pathogens that end up as
dangerous residues in the food people eat. In response, there is mounting
pressure on the US to impose stiff new requirements on the makers of new
animal antibiotics.

* The proposed rules lower traditional organic standards for the intensive
confinement of farm animals, use of non-organic animal feed, and other
factory farm practices. In doing so, the USDA is opening up the organic
market for the US's meat, poultry, and dairy cartels, all of whom stand to
gain billions of dollars in extra profits under relaxed or degraded rules
for organic meat and animal products.

* The leaked USDA memo published in Mother Jones also makes it clear that
Washington bureaucrats consider it a "Hot Issue" to prevent the nation's
several dozen non-governmental private organic certifiers from certifying
and labeling organic products utilizing standards higher than the minimum
standards dictated by the USDA. As the leaked memo makes clear, America's
food giants not only want relaxed rules so that their products can be
labeled as "USDA Organic" without having to make any substantial changes in
their production methods, but they also want to eliminate any competition
in the marketplace from smaller organic producers who are using genuine
organic production methods.

* The rules not only give USDA bureaucrats a legally-binding monopoly over
the word "organic" but also empower the USDA to regulate or even prohibit
eco-labels of any kind. As the proposed rules state: "the labelling or
market information that directly or indirectly imply organic production and
handling practices" may be prohibited. Examples of prohibited labeling
would include: "produced with out synthetic pesticides," "pesticide-free
farm,"" No growth stimulants administered," "raised without antibiotics,"
"humanely raised" and "ecologically produced."

Another important consideration is how degraded organic rules will affect
international standards and trade. The USDA rule allows for a number of
materials and practices that contradict existing international norms for
organic production and processing as set by the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Accreditation Programme, Codex
guidelines, and European Union regulations. Examples of these heretofore
prohibited practices that would be allowed under the USDA
Organic label include the intensive confinement of livestock, the use of
toxic inert ingredients in allowed pesticides, highly soluble fertilizers,
no requirement for soil building crop rotations in grain production,
burdensome and inappropriate residue analysis requirements, and lower
percentages of organic ingredients in multi-ingredient products.

"What's happening is that the USDA is attempting to shift the whole organic
concept from a process-based approach (emphasizing the way something is
grown) to a product, or performance-based, approach (emphasizing measurable
properties of the final product). This meshes very well with current U.S.
Trade policy, and it dovetails very well with the government's opposition
to mandatory labeling for genetically engineered products," states Michael
Sligh, program director for the Rural Advancement Foundation International
(RAFI), and founding chairman of the NOSB.

Organic Takeover And Consumers Right to Know

Of course the USDA plan to mis-label organic foods and criminalize dissent
is just part of a larger political strategy designed to restrict consumer
choice and force controversial agricultural practices on an unwilling
public. In order to facilitate this force feeding, labels must be
prohibited or rendered meaningless. But fortunately, opposition to this
"no-labeling" policy is mounting, as evidenced by the dramatic increase in
organic sales, the one brand of food products that consumers know they can
trust.

But opposition to the US's "no-labeling" policies has begun to manifest
itself on other fronts as well. On May 27, in Washington, D.C a coalition
of scientists, health professionals, religious leaders and chefs, led by
attorneys from the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA),
joined plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug
Administration's policy of allowing genetically engineered foods on the
market without mandatory safety testing or labeling. The plaintiffs in the
suit are challenging the marketing of 33 different genetically engineered
foods which include potatoes, tomatoes, soy, corn, squash and many other
fruits and vegetables to which a variety of new genes from different
species have been added.

"The FDA has placed the interests of a handful of biotechnology companies
ahead of their responsibility to protect public health," stated Andrew
Kimbrell, Executive Director of the ICTA, and co-counsel on the case. "By
failing to require testing and labeling of genetically engineered foods,
the agency has made consumers unknowing guinea pigs for potentially
harmful, unregulated food substances."

On the same day the lawsuit was announced, in Ottawa, Canada, a broad
cross-section of environmental and consumer public interest organizations
rallied and held press conferences to pressure the GATT Codex Alimentarius
Commission to require mandatory labeling of all genetically engineered
foods on a global basis. In front of a bank of TV cameras and news
reporters outside the Codex meeting hall, Consumers International was
joined by representatives of Greenpeace International, the Council of
Canadians, and the Pure Food Campaign. Speakers from each of these
organizations stressed that unlabeled, untested biotech foods pose
significant health and environmental threats to the public and constitute
the major global roadblock to the development of sustainable and organic
agricultural production practices.

In a dramatic and well-received speech inside the Codex meeting hall,
Julian Edwards, Director General of Consumers International (CI), a network
of 235 consumer organizations in 109 nations, presented evidence to the
Codex assembly that consumers internationally have a fundamental right to
mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods, "to know what's in
their food and how it has been produced." As Edwards stated, "One of the
ironies of this issue is the contrast between the enthusiasm of food
producers to claim that their biologically engineered products are
different and unique when they seek to patent them and their similar
enthusiasm for claiming that they are just the same as other foods when
asked to label them. ...The argument that ordinary people are not--or
should not be--concerned about this issue is completely wrong." The full
text of Edwards' speech is available on the internet at:
http://www.consumersinternational.org/campaigns/codex/jedwards.html

Organic Standards: What's the USDA's Next Move?

How the USDA and powerful corporate interests will ultimately respond to
the massive public rejection of their proposed organic rules remains to be
seen. Most informed sources in Washington believe that the USDA will try to
push through a compromise Final Rule in late 1998 or 1999 which will lower
standards somewhat while trying to avoid setting off the kind of massive
backlash that resulted from their more blatant December 1997 proposals. As
long as the USDA has a legal monopoly on the word organic, as long as it's
a civil crime for non-USDA organic certifiers and producers to utilize
alternative higher standards and labels, the transnational corporations can
afford to go more slowly, gradually degrading the standards further, over a
period of several years, or even a decade. The Final Rule, the USDA tell
us, will be a compromise rule, something we must swallow for the good of
the economy and the bottom line of the food sector.

The flaw in this plan is that millions of organic consumers--as well as
certifiers, farmers, and retailers--are now so disillusioned and
distrustful of the USDA that they are no longer willing to accept any
compromises at all.

In an important tactical move, 27 leading non-USDA organic certifiers
recently agreed to unite and adopt common high standards which basically
conform with the recommendations of the National Organic Standards Board
and international IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture
Movements) requirements. These high standards are not only what 90% of
consumers want, this is what they demand.

The organic cerfiers' Independent Accreditation system will provide a
national and internationally-recognized set of standards and labels which
will serve as an alternative to the forthcoming "USDA Organic" federal
regulations.

Consumer organizations, organic farmers, and natural food retailers (at
least the small and medium-sized ones) are preparing for a protracted
battle with the USDA. Any Final Rule published by the USDA which gives
Washington bureaucrats a monopoly on the word "organic" is totally
unacceptable. Any Final Rule which prohibits non-governmental organic
certifiers and state government certifiers from labeling according to
standards higher than the minimum standards of the USDA represents a
violation of American consumers' Constitutional rights to free speech. Any
Final Rule that prohibits producers and certifiers from utilizing
eco-labels that even imply organic production will be vehemently opposed.
As the proposed USDA rules read now, Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue, Cargill, Kraft,
Kroger, Safeway, McDonald's--any of America's food giants--will have the
legal option to sue any farmer, any co-op, any retailer, or any processor
or handler in court for certifying or labeling, or even implying in their
advertising, that their products are actually "real organic" products,
which exceed the world's lowest minimum organic requirements, those of the
USDA. This is not just a bad law, this is Food Fascism.

National Activist Organization of Organic Consumers

On June 5 a number of leading organic activists in the U.S. announced the
formation of "a new nationwide activist organization for organic
consumers," the Organic Consumers Association. The OCA is capitalizing on
the increased consumer awareness and activism resulting from the USDA's
proposed rules. The OCA will be working through natural food co-ops, retail
stores, farmers markets, and other community organizations (holistic health
practitioners, community restaurants, public interest organizations,
vegetarian and animal protection groups, community media, etc.) to build a
forminable political force.

Further information on the OCA is available on the internet at:
http://www.purefood.org

While the USDA's degraded rules clearly pose a direct threat to organic
food in the US and ultimately worldwide, they have also provided a unique
opportunity for food activists. Rarely have the lines been more clearly
drawn. The national organic standards controversy in the US has provided
consumers and activists with an opportunity to truly challenge the
transnational food
corporations, mobilize a mass base, and win.

Ben Lilliston
Sustain: The Environmental Information Group
920 N. Franklin, Suite 206
Chicago, IL 60610
312-951-8999
ben@sustainusa.org

Ronnie Cummins/SOS Campaign/Organic Consumers Association

Webmaster: steve@greenpeople.org