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From Acres USA Dec. 2005 Issue
WHOSE RING SHALL WE KISS FIRST? By Steve Sprinkel

It is plain that a corporate mafia has seized control of the organic movement, now that the US
Congress agreed in secret to allow the Organic Foods Production Act ( OFPA) to be amended
on the 1st of November. Many were thunderstruck that in the end such a deed could be so
effortless. But its just another example of a democracy in shambles. As a staff member for
Senator Byron Dorgan told me: " Well, that seems to be the way they do things around here
lately."

The amendment, attached to the Agriculture Appropriations bill without debate, reverses the
Appeals Court decision won by Arthur Harvey that ordered the USDA's National Organic
Program to conform to the standards required in the OFPA. Just a month earlier, hundreds of
thousands of organic activists believed they had won a reprieve after having pounded the
government with one simple message: Do Not Amend the Act.

Acquiescing to this overwhelming sentiment, the congress agreed in October to not attach the
amendment and asked the Secretary of Agriculture, Michael Johanns, to hear from all parties
and make recommendations back to congress in order to satisfy the entire organic community.
This deal ends up being a farce. We sat back, waiting for the opportunity to communicate to the
National Organic Standards Board, and NOP staff so that we could protect the integrity of
organic foods. But there was no dialogue, no effort to compromise and hear all sides. The
Organic Trade Association had no intention of living with this bargain.

Instead, OTA's food processors may continue to use a broad spectrum of complex chemicals to
manufacture organic products that are not fundamentally different from conventional foods.
Farmers, truckers and machinery operators must continue to assure that no unapproved
materials nor conventional raw products contaminate the raw organic farm product, but once the
stuff gets to the factory, those safeguards are no longer required. Organic consumers are not up
to speed on the details about the FDA-approved emulsifiers, boiler chemicals, amines and
deflocculants, that were prohibited by the organic law-but most consumers know the basics:
organic food is supposed to be free of these things. The chemical sector often reminds us
self-servingly that "most of these substances do not end up in finished products in detectable
amounts."

But the fact is there is no testing of these carloads of factory products, these Wal-marts
crammed with inert, embalmed food with sanctified crunchiness. The fact is that intuitive
knowledge that gained a foothold years ago and was adopted as common sense, that a steady
diet contaminated by toxic substances measured in parts per million will sooner or later bring on
some harm. The damage is cumulative, not from one major episode. Many of us who eat an
organic diet can smell and taste the strangeness in conventional food immediately. For many
adherence to organic has become a kind of kosher law. The cheese whiz is an unclean thing.
Thousands who have become super-sensitive to false foods fall ill from accidental exposure to
hidden synthetics.

After the dust had settled, Eric Kindberg's analysis was, as usual, clear and consise:
"Amending the OFPA appears to be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The problem was so
easy to correct. Manufacturers could just follow OFPA and change their labeling until they
could meet the requirements they know the customer is looking for-pure and unadulterated
organic food. It would have cost a little money and a little time and a little compromise on their
part."

And in the end, they would have delivered a transparently authentic product-which is the
cornerstone of the organic farming movement.

Jim Riddle, the outgoing chairman of the National Organic Standards Board summarized it
similarly: "We don't want organic food manufacturers having carte blanche use of the same
kind of synthetics that conventional food processors use, especially when it involves things that
do not appear on the ingredient panels. I think people choose to buy organic food because they
don't use all those things."

The amendment also changes the organic dairy conversion standards, allowing for transitional
feed and forage , all produced on the farm in conversion, thus eliminating the requirement for
feed in the last year of transition to be 80% organic. For years we have argued against any
change to the law, but in this I feel a compromise is of value. For one thing, the whole notion of
three-year transition is merely a ball-park guesstimation of when land is no longer toxic. We do
not soil-test for residues, we merely inquire about the land use history. If conventional cotton or
cut flowers had been grown previously, then we asked for an analysis. Here we can apply some
science: if the land in transition has a sketchy history, then investigate the extent of the
potential contamination.

The new requirement is also not a practical concern because the onerous cost of feeding
animals organic feed without being paid to produce organic milk is acknowledged and resolved.
The change also eliminates the allowance of 20% conventional feed, which is generally
produced in bulk and contains synthetics. Unfortunately, what was not changed is the capability
of a dairy concern to continually bring on heifers from conventional farms and place them in
organic production after one year no matter what they had eaten previously, where they were
raised or what had been their veterinary history.

The amendment, in addition, will allow for conventional ingredients to be used when organic
ingredients are not commercially available. This can be performed by fiat, by the office of the
USDA Secretary. How can anyone with a brain at USDA believe that consumers will go along
with a product that is labeled organic but may be instead be composed of conventional
ingredients if the Secretary of Agriculture deems that there is a shortage that would interrupt
production? Like shortage of cucumbers, or wheat, or butter? And consumers are going to find
out that they are being been tricked. For years we have kept the hypocrisy a secret from public
view-maybe not here in these pages, where readers and writers share a flinty affection for being
straight-but in the mainstream what we have long suffered is the embarrassing merchandising of
an idea that has been ripped off.

Some fear that a broad revelation of the facts will hurt organic farmers by driving down demand
for raw ingredients. As if we need to worry about US domestic market share anyway; the import
trade is about to overwhelm the American organic miracle. And main stream fresh product
delivered to supermarkets is increasingly produced by a few mega-labels that only farm
organically on a small percentage of all their acreage-so why protect Whole Foods and Cal
Organic? Whole Foods trades massive tonnage of conventional product ( a huge conflict of
mission) and Grimmway, one of the largest California fresh vegetable growers now owns Cal-O.

The organic marketplace, as it stands now, is not worth protecting if the definition of organic is
going to be held hostage by an ignorant majority of congress-people. What is next? Cut the
transition period to one year? Allow GMO seeds because so little seed is not a Monsanto
product? When will the struggle to protect consumers ever end?

Perhaps it is better to ask: When will it begin? The situation yields some room in which to
maneuver if we can educate consumers sufficiently on the nuances of the various organic
labeling categories. The label "100 % Organic" is unaffected by the amendment. Remarkably,
editorial writers at the New York Times got it right a few days after the bill was voted on when
they wrote:

"In part, this is a battle over a label. The big producers, which often use synthetic materials in
processing, want to call their processed foods organic because that designation commands
premium prices. They do not want to say their products are made with organic ingredients - a
lesser designation that allows more synthetics. This is also a cultural battle, a struggle between
the people who have long kept the organic faith - despite the historic neglect of the U.S.D.A. -
and industry giants that see a rapidly expanding and highly profitable niche that can be pried
open even further with lobbying."

Normally something so tediously arcane as a labeling nuance might escape even the brightest
people. But in the Times editorial, we observe that their writers have been listening to other
voices than merely the OTA, and it seems that the antagonists to the amendment, and the way
in which the change was accomplished, have been acknowledged. We have been amazed that
such things seem to have remained a mystery to almost everyone connected with the
federalization of organic. But this is too blatant. The corporate mafia has clearly pulled off a
robbery. And why be shocked? The police in congress had been paid to look the other way a
long time ago.

Mark Kastel, of the Cornucopia Institute earlier warned that "if the OTA has its way, even if
they won they would lose. Not only do they get outted as another selfish, corporate-controlled
lobby, but by virtue of the huge media attention they have been revealed for what they really
are. And no matter how they try to spin it now, they have planted the seed of doubt in the mind
of the organic consumer. Now we will all be made to suffer because we have lost consumer
trust."

My customers are already asking about it.

But it needs to be said that Kraft and Dean Foods and Hain don't deserve the credit for these
sorry results. They were just the muscle that made the amendment possible. If it had been
Walnut Acres or even Whole Foods asking for such changes, congress would have merely
asked ³"Walnut Who?"

The corporate mafia got the law changed, but the law was changed only to reflect what a series
of NOSB members had year by year allowed to become part of the standards for organic
processing. This was a long time coming, years before the final rule and the Harvey law suit.

We were there when they made up their bogus processing materials criteria, and when we
warned them that it was not lawful they just shrugged it off callously, saying that they "needed"
what was used in conventional processing. Kindberg again, on the history:

"The misleading interpretation and violation of the Organic Foods Production Act began in
April 1995 when the National Organic Standards Board passed what amounted to a Final
Recommendation to the USDA to allow substances prohibited by OFPA in processed organic
food. After the USDA National Organic Program received the Final Recommendation, they
incorporated it in the Final Organic Rule that was implemented January 2001.

"Members of the NOSB ( the majority frequently being OTA members) in 1995 and from that
time forward were fully aware they were violating the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 in
the Final Recommendation. That is why the 100% Organic label was inserted. It is hard to
believe they were not aware they were violating the trust of organic customers simultaneously.
Maybe, they just lost track of what organic integrity means, or as many food processors,
organic or not feel, the customer just does not know beans."

Maybe we can begin to turn this around with the help of concepts like the Slow Food
Movement. I don't think the USDA yet has the power to censor cookbooks.

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