JOSHUA FRANK: Federal Food Policy -- Organic Inconsistencies

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By Joshua Frank -- World News Trust

Healthy living has become the national obsession these past few decades. As the rate of cancer continues to escalate, and with the obesity epidemic as it is in the United States, people are turning toward healthier diets and lifestyles in hopes of enhancing their longevity. Awareness about food’s nutritional content is also on the rise -- many health conscious Americans are concerned with the quality and content of the food they are scarfing down every day. As these interests have grown, so has the organic food movement. Organics, as the general definition puts it, are products that are not grown genetically, and are developed without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides or hormones.

In 1973, after the United States banned the perilous DDT, the underground organics industry grew almost overnight, due in part to the expanding consumer opposition to chemical pesticides as well as the desire to eat foods that were produced without negatively impacting the environment. Many people feared that conventional store-bought food was not as safe to eat as chemical produced goods, and with the growing awareness of what DDT did to human and environmental health, consumers were growing weary of the corporate agricultural industry. So people hastily flocked back to the land and planted crops on their own, or joined food co-ops where they could grow and trade products among a community of like-minded comrades. The market soon reacted to this growing demand for organic foods. In the 1990s companies that produced organics estimated sales of more than $1 billion annually. Organic food was here to stay.

Congress soon followed and passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) in 1990, which was attached to the Farm Bill and established the initial framework to create National Organic Standards which set the legal standards for organic foods. OFPA mandated the formation of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which was organized to advise the Secretary of Agriculture in setting the standards for the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP). NOSB based its recommendations on industry consensus an organic advocates were pleased. The next step, however, was a bit more cumbersome. Turning the USDA’s organic standards into rules and regulations, took some intense lobbying. Americans didn’t seem ready to put the food they ate to the test. But in October 2002, the USDA officially began labeling foods that met the agency’s definition of ‘organic’ -- products with 95% organic content or higher.

Attempting to define what the USDA considers “organic” is like trying to figure out which lie George W. Bush told last -- it is a difficult, if not impossible task. Since 2002, the USDA has changed its definition almost every year. So today’s products labeled “organic” by the agency may not have been labeled the same in 2003. This sort of wavering has been met with much criticism from many organic food advocates who believe the USDA should stick to the standards it agreed upon in 1990. Others, mostly industry suit coats, still believe the USDA’s labeling is too stringent. And why wouldn’t they? The lesser the standards, the fatter their bottom-lines. And here is where the lobbying efforts on the part of the agriculture giants come into play. “Certification is becoming big business,” writes Hilary Chop for the Alternatives Journal. “Accredited certification agencies are becoming for-profit enterprises instead of farmer- and consumer-run organizations. This raises the potential for conflict of interests, particularly since farms pay the certifying agency based on their acreage. If a mega-farm wants an exception from the rules, it can be all too tempting for the enforcing officer who receives a commission, to make allowances.”

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