How OCA is Supporting Family Farmers With It's Organic Body Care Campaign

A letter from the OCA to California Crop Exchange:

8/29/2003

Mr. Pat Daddow
President, California Crop Exchange
1511 Butte House Road, Suite A
Yuba City, CA 95993

Dear Mr. Daddow,

Thank you for your considerate letter. The Organic Consumers Association appreciates your workin supporting family farmers. As part of our mission, we are also focused on work that protects the small family farmer, and our Coming Clean Organic Body Care campaign does not deviate from that mission.

The OCA has no problem with certified organic hydrosols, no more than OCA has a problem with certified organic teas or infusions. However, the problem is not the hydrosols in themselves, but rather the practice by some unscrupulous body care companies of counting the ordinary distilled water from steam in hydrosol as "organic" in their multi-ingredient body care formulations. These formulations are based on the same conventional cleansers and conditioners as always. This is not allowed under the NOP anymore than counting the ordinary water in an organic tea. The water is simply neutral. Otherwise, as the NOP recognized, companies could obtain a "70%" organic label claims by simply counting such relatively cheap filler water in a tea or floral water, versus sourcing actual core non-water agricultural ingredients organically.

The OCA has been informed from various expert sources that the majority of even the highest quality floral waters are mostly ordinary distilled water from steam, much like the highest quality teas. The OCA is presently funding a study to determine what the proportion of ordinary distilled water is in floral waters, in both quality hydrosols as well as inferior hydrosols. In creating a high quality hydrosol, only the first 30% or so of distillate is captured, as that is the only portion containing actual plant water and matter from the steaming process. The study OCA is funding should provide objective data as to the relative content of ordinary water versus water from the plant source that should count as "organic" when floral water is added to another multi-ingredient product.

In regards to small family farmer livelihood, as our coming report will show, currently the vast majority of organic hydrosols in the largest "organic" cosmetics companies (Avalon, Natures Gate, Jason's) are purchased from a single farm and produced on relatively small acreage. Insofar as organic hydrosols are going to be used in body care products, only the plant source water should contribute to the organic ingredient calculation in the products, NOT THE ORDINARY WATER captured from steam. If regular water can be counted as an organic ingredient, we may as well throw all of the current organic standards out the window, which truly would be the final blow to the small family farmer sector of the U.S. agricultural industry.

The results of the study will be released, along with other groundbreaking hydrosol related industry research, in early September. We will certainly keep you in the loop on that. Please let your member farmers know the OCA is working hard to resolve this issue in a manner that includes open dialogue with the OTA and USDA and ultimately results in protecting consumers and family farmers nationwide.

Craig Minowa
Environmental Scientist
Organic Consumers Association