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Copyright 2005 National Public Radio (R)
November 26, 2005 Saturday

Organic farmers divided over synthetics

SCOTT SIMON, host:

Organic foods were once specialty items found in co-ops and health-food
stores. But they have become so hugely popular in mass market that now
Wal-Mart is the nation's largest seller of organic produce. NPR's Greg Allen
reports that the rising popularity of organic products is creating tensions in the
industry, most recently over the use of synthetic ingredients in foods labeled
organic.

GREG ALLEN reporting:

If you imagine a dairy farm, chances are it would look at lot like Jim
Weideberg's(ph) farm in Gays Mills, Wisconsin. Weideberg's farm sits atop a
series of green rolling hills in Wisconsin's dairy country. It's small as dairy farms
go, just 45 cows.

(Soundbite of cows)

Mr. JIM WEIDEBERG (Dairy Farmer): It seems like the cows are over there on
the next hill in the pasture and you see the grass we have yet.

ALLEN: Jim Weideberg delivers milk to the Organic Valley Co-op. Co-op
headquarters are not far away, in La Farge, Wisconsin. It's the nation's second
largest seller of organic milk. Its CEO, George Siemon, started out as a city kid
who found his way to a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin as part of the
back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Today Siemon still wears his blond hair
down to his shoulders, but he stopped milking cows and instead runs a company
with $250 million in annual sales. Although business has never been better,
Siemon says there's also trouble in what he calls the organic food movement.

Mr. GEORGE SIEMON (Organic Valley Co-op): It just really hurts to see the
organic family fighting.

ALLEN: The tensions came to a head earlier this year in the form of a federal
court ruling that severely limited the use of synthetic substances in organic food,
a ruling which many believed threatened the industry's continued growth.
Siemon says many of the synthetics banned were substances that consumers
have long accepted, even asked for: things like calcium fortification in orange
juice.

Mr. SIEMON: Well, if you take calcium and you heat it up, it's now a synthetic.
CO2 is a gas that's used for your drinks. That's a synthetic. For example, the
vitamins used in milk are synthetics. And, of course, that's required by state law.

ALLEN: From its origins more than 30 years ago, organic food has grown into
an industry with well over $10 billion in annual sales and one that's been steadily
growing by 20 percent a year. Much of that growth is in processed foods, an
area where synthetics play an important role. And that's why Congress stepped
in, adding a rider to an agriculture spending bill that allowed organic food makers
to resume using a long list of synthetics. Siemon believes the deal was necessary
to avoid causing hardship to an industry that's still finding its way. Much of the
discontent, he believes, is among old-timers who are upset at the changes going
on in organics and at the growing influence of companies like Kraft and Wal-Mart.

Mr. SIEMON: I have a little saying. I say that pioneers hate settlers, and there's
a certain degree of that going on now where people are unhappy that we've
succeeded so much that now you have the major food companies coming in and
in the food business. But for me, if this is a movement, then the success is part of
what you hope for.

ALLEN: Michael Potter is one of those organic pioneers. Potter is angry about
the congressional amendment even though the company that he runs, Eden
Foods, is also one of the leaders in the organic food industry. Started in the late
1960s as a food co-op in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Eden Foods today is a company
with $60 million in annual sales and a state-of-the-art soy milk factory in Saline,
Michigan.

Mr. MICHAEL POTTER (Eden Foods): We'll start down at this end. The soy
beans come in at this end right...

ALLEN: Michael Potter may have started in the counterculture, but today with
close-cropped hair, business suit and tie, he looks every bit the CEO. Eden Foods
introduced soy milk to the US market in 1983. Today its product, Edensoy, makes
up almost half of the company's sales. Walking past rooms full of boilers, tanks
and steam steel tubing, Potter reaches into a hopper and scoops out a handful of
the main ingredient: top quality organic soybeans.

Mr. POTTER: A lot of soybeans you'll find a little black mark, you know, on its
belly, like--and but we only use clear hymen beans here.

ALLEN: Potter says Eden Foods has to use synthetics to produce its soy milk;
silicon dioxide, for example, a defoaming agent. He says none of it ends up in the
final product. Potter says the industry was working with USDA to craft rules that
would once again allow the use of commonsense synthetics, things like silicon
dioxide and hydrogen peroxide, used to clean packaging. But he was outraged
when Congress stepped in, passing what he believes is an amendment that's bad
for organic businesses and consumers.

Mr. POTTER: Which basically allows anything to be used in organic foods
production--anything.

ALLEN: Potter concedes that the industry will have to change to accommodate
new customers and new businesses, but not in a way that, in his words, dumbs
down US organic standards.

Mr. POTTER: The organic foods movement, and/or industry, whatever you want
to call it, was the development of an alternative to the status quo, not to become
part of it.

ALLEN: Supporters of the changes believe Potter's worries are overblown. They
say even the biggest companies have no interest in watering down organic
standards or doing anything to undercut consumer confidence. But with nearly
40 percent of Americans now buying organic food and sales projected to reach
$30 billion by 2007, clearly there's a lot riding on what exactly the label `organic'
means. Greg Allen, NPR News, Kansas City.

SIMON: You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.

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Analysis of above article by Arthur Harvey

The NPR story should have been titled "Organic Manufacturers Divided",
because neither Potter nor Siemon are farmers.

  Anyhow, the specific "synthetics" mentioned in this story are: 1) calcium as a
nutrient supplement; 2) "vitamins used in milk"; 3) carbon dioxide; 4) silicon
dioxide; 5) hydrogen peroxide used to clean packaging.   Let me examine each.

  #1 and #2 are about vitamins and minerals, which were not part of my lawsuit.
USDA has never published detailed regulations about nutrients added to organic
foods, with the result that we are left with a vague statement about nutrients are
acceptable if required or recommended by other agencies. At any rate, they
should be classified as natural or not, and so included on the National List---but
that was too much trouble for USDA, so they lumped them all together as
synthetics.

#3, CO2 or carbon dioxide, is a natural part of the air we breathe. Nothing
synthetic about it, except that some industrial processes produce it artificially.
So, USDA follows the path of bureaucratic laziness and calls all CO2 "synthetic".
The correct remedy for this problem is rule-making.

  #4 Silicon Dioxide is a fancy name for sand, one of the most natural substances
around. Likewise it can be a synthetic, depending on how it is processed. (In
the same way, water can be a synthetic product of chemical processes, but no
one has yet declared water to be "synthetic".)   So USDA needs to get off their
butt and list this stuff correctly.

  #5 Hydrogen peroxide and other cleaners do not belong on the National List of
"ingredients", as is now the case.    USDA should create a separate part of the
National List for Packaging and Storage materials, and cleaners.

  Finally, George Siemon says the dispute is between old-timers and newcomers
to organics. I think the more fundamental tension is between consumers and
manufacturers.   All manufacturers---including me---have an interest in using as
many synthetic ingredients as possible, because they are cheaper, more available,
and more consistent than the natural alternatives.   Four out of my own nine
manufactured blueberry and apple products will have to be changed or
re-labeledaccording to the court's decision.   Consumers, on th other hand, want
to be able to choose foods without synthetics, even if at higher cost---especially
synthetics not mentioned on the labels.