Organic Integrity Weakened by the USDA and Special Interest Groups

June 11, 2002 The integrity of the organic label is being undermined by back-room politics only six months after the National Organic Program (NOP) was launched.

Thanks to a last-minute addition to the massive $397 million Omnibus Appropriations Bill, farmers can be USDA-certified as organic even if their animals receive feed that is not 100% organic.

The provision—slipped into the 3,000-page bill and passed on February 13 as Congress was heading home before a large snowstorm slapped Washington, D.C.—was added thanks to the lobbying of Fieldale Farms Corp., a Georgia-based factory chicken farm. The amendment, by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), was buried in section 771 and received no objection from Congress, nor from the NOP staff—in fact, several senators and representatives said later that they had no idea what had been added to the huge House-Senate compromise bill when it passed at 3 a.m. The language allows farmers to feed their animals conventional grain—grain that may have been grown with chemicals—if organic feed is more than twice as expensive, and still label the animal products as organic.

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that spokeswoman Holly Givens of the Organic Trade Association called the rider language "a threat to the organic label....the fact that it was done in an underhanded way should not be allowed to stand as a precedent for other people to try."

Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association, charged that factory farming interests such as Fieldale Farms "want a piece of the $11 billion a year organic industry" and "are manipulating the USDA and Congress to change the rules to suit their toxic-industrial style of farming."

There are already efforts underway to counter the action. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative Sam Farr (D-CA) have introduced the Organic Restoration Act, which would seek to repeal the organic feed rider. Senator Leahy was one of the original co-sponsors of the 1990 Organic Foods Protection Act, which inspired hundreds of thousands of citizens interested in seeing organic food succeed to submit supportive comments to the federal government.

"In a long series of battles between corporate farming interests and those who want to see the integrity of the organic label upheld," says Robert Hadad, Director of Farming Systems for The HSUS, "this latest offensive tactic has outraged the organic community and threatens to undermine the integrity of the organic label. Section 771 must be repealed if the organic label is to have any meaning."

Related Links

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HSUS Recommendations to the NOSB