SOS or Safegaurd organic standards

October 9, 2005 10:12 PM

SOS or Safegaurd Organic Standards is what the Organic Consumers Association is calling their effort to protect the USDA's National Organic Program's organic food standards adopted in 2002. A rider attached to the 2006 agriculture appropriations bill and sponsored by the Organic Trade Association contains changes to the standards that in their view will make "technical corrections" to the national organic standards. This became necessary in their view after a 73-year-old organic blueberry farmer from Maine named Arthur Harvey won a court appeal against the USDA, arguing that federal regulations guiding organic food standards were less stringent than the original legislation had intended. This issue is splitting the organic standards lobbying community. Or perhaps this has been in the works for sometime as large corporate food producers have moved to take advantage of the rapid growth of the organics market. (more inside)
posted by flummox (14 comments total)

On one side you have the Organic Consumers Association and a coalition of farmers, manufactures and grassroots organizations and on the other is the Organic trade association and their investors. The OTC says that if the standards are not "fixed" organics as we know it will cease to exist and many will go broke. OCA's position is that while the particular ingredients and methods of use can be negotiated, it is the rule changes to the NOP and the fact that they are being legislated through congress as opposed to going through the agreed upon steps for changes to the NOP rules that is the real issue. The rule changes proposed will reduce the right for public input and control as well as eroding the power and buffering role of the National Organic Standards Board thus concentrating more decision and rules making power in the hands of the USDA and the office of the Secretary of Agriculture. In addition the method being used to change these rules,congressional legislation, will set a harmful precedent for further fiddling with standards.
posted by flummox at 10:14 PM on October 9, 2005

Great post, flummox. Thanks for all this.
posted by homunculus at 11:21 PM on October 9, 2005

Very informative and eye-opening stuff. Thanks.

I'm reminded of a recent Salon article ("day pass" req'd to read the whole thing, unfortunately), about the less-than-transparent nature of the ubiquitous Horizon Organic's dairy production methods.
posted by BT at 4:45 AM on October 10, 2005

My brother-in-law was and sister-in-law is very active in oganic farm standards and I guess I would put them on the side of the OCA. (My b-i-l drowned this summer--thus the reason for past tense). After years of going broke as a small farmer, Jeff became an inspector for several organic standards organizations (that's the way it works--one inspects farms under contract from a standards agency such as Oregon Tilth, Midwest Organic (MOSA), OCIA). Bonnie joined him in the business after retiring from schoolteaching, and is the acting director of MOSA.

The OTC is, as described above, a shill for the corporations who have finally figured out that Organic is Big Business. Their proposed standards would allow for a considerable amount of non-organic practices and ingredients to be combined with organic and still get the "organic" label.

We buy organic, and as far as ubiquitous brands we go with Organic Valley products. OV is a coalition of small farmers, not factory farms. Supporting OV is supporting local agriculture (at least for the Midwest). I don't know too much about Horizon, but they and other Cali Mega-Organics (Earth Bound Farms comes to mind) have a less-than-savory reputation for cutting corners and having a philosophy that "mostly" organic is better for you than the crap you're eating anyway, so shut up.
posted by beelzbubba at 6:31 AM on October 10, 2005

I've been very specious of the corporate takeover of the organic industry and have been looking for good sites that expose the hypocrisy. Corporate Organics has a good rundown of some of the cheaters, and Certified Organics has a good chart linking all the corporate owned organic products to their parent.

They are even lobbying Congress to use industrial sewage as fertilizer and still be able to use the term organic for the product. By the way that practice is all well and good for products not labeled organic if you can believe it.
posted by any major dude at 7:59 AM on October 10, 2005

Thanks, flummox, for doing your part to ward off creeping tendrils of coporate greed from my organic produce.


I'm tempted to suggest TWO organic standards :

1) "Organic"

2) "Corporate Organic"

Heh heh.
posted by troutfishing at 8:17 AM on October 10, 2005

Or maybe :

"Organic", and

"Organic Lite"
posted by troutfishing at 8:18 AM on October 10, 2005

It seems to me the best method is for all these people fighting the changes to band together and come up with a trademarked certification for exactly how they want their food made.

You could call it "certified happy earth" or perhaps something less silly.

But from my perspective it seems like the whole thing has a lot more to do with anti-corporate feelings then health or environmental concerns.
posted by delmoi at 8:26 AM on October 10, 2005

Delmoi, the problem I have with buying my food from multi-national corporations is that when I look at the label I can see that they are using cheap and unhealthy ingredients because the main goal of the corporation is to maximize profits. If that means they feed chicken shit to their pigs, so be it. Is it unhealthy? Maybe. Can they find a scientist to create doubt on that subject? Probably. Can they depend on a Senator on the payroll to vote favorably against legislation that might decrease profits. Definitely. I really don't want to put anything in my body that some accountant at a head office is figuring out how to save a penny on each product by replacing corn syrup with high fructose corn syrup.
posted by any major dude at 8:55 AM on October 10, 2005

But what does all this mean for the Organic Rebellion?
posted by homunculus at 9:55 AM on October 10, 2005

Major D. Thanks for the link to the certified organics chart. It seems more up to date and its' easier to read then the one I linked to.

delmoi, the organic and sustainable equation is a complex one. If corporate interests fit into that equation on the plus side fine. The question in my mind is who is behind the apparent weakening of organic standards and why? In addition tons of work has been done to get the standards to where they are, why should the people that have done this work have to cut and run because another group wants to make a end run around the agreed upon rule making mechanism?
posted by flummox at 10:43 AM on October 10, 2005

Is it unhealthy? Maybe.

Thank you. Luxury Food. Organics are the 6500lb Humvee of the agriculture world. Move on.
posted by techgnollogic at 2:03 PM on October 10, 2005

Actually if you read the book Ishmael he makes a pretty good point that agriculture is the 6500lb Humvee of the modern world. This world has been going to shit since the farmers killed off the hunter gatherers.
posted by any major dude at 4:33 PM on October 10, 2005

delmoi: "It seems to me the best method is for all these people fighting thechanges to band together and come up with a trademarked certificationfor exactly how they want their food made. You could call it "certified happy earth" or perhaps something less silly."

My farm is Certified Naturally Grown, largely because I wanted to differentiate what I do from that of the corporate organic farms. There are plenty of loopholes now that they are able to drive tractors through, to say nothing of the new proposals.

As I tell my customers (and they tell their friends), it's more important to buy your food from someone local you can get to know personally than it is to buy something with the USDA Certified Organic logo.
posted by ewagoner at 7:27 AM on October 11, 2005