{"id":30159,"date":"2021-11-12T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=30159"},"modified":"2021-12-05T22:16:08","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T02:16:08","slug":"organic-takes-on-existential-environmental-and-health-crises-while-critics-lack-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2021\/11\/organic-takes-on-existential-environmental-and-health-crises-while-critics-lack-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Organic Takes on Existential Health and Environmental Crises, While Some Critics Lack Context (Response to New Yorker piece)"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides<\/em>, November 12, 2021) Omnivorous readers may have encountered an article, in the November 15 issue of The New Yorker<\/em> magazine<\/a>, titled \u2014 at best misleadingly, and certainly sensationally \u2014 \u201cThe Great Organic-Food Fraud.\u201d The subhead comports with the tone of the headline: \u201cThere\u2019s no way to confirm that a crop was grown organically. Randy Constant exploited our trust in the labels \u2014 and made a fortune.\u201d The piece, by Ian Parker, tells a complex tale of the machinations of dishonest and greedy people who saw, in the commerce in organic grains, an opportunity to misrepresent nonorganic crops as organic and make a boatload of money in doing so. What the article fails to do is render any comprehensive picture of how National Organic Program<\/a> certification<\/a> and inspection<\/a> work, and the underlying principles, values, and standards in federal law (the Organic Foods Production Act), nor does it review either the benefits of organic agriculture broadly or the massive harmful impacts of conventional, chemical-intensive agriculture in the U.S. Beyond Pesticides provides ballast, in this Daily News Blog article, to the failings of the New Yorker<\/em> article and the damage it might do to the organic movement.<\/p>\r\n

It is worth noting that Mr. Parker seems to cast<\/a> a slightly jaundiced eye on the whole organic enterprise, as evidenced by his comment: \u201cIn 2000, organic sales in ordinary supermarkets exceeded, for the first time, sales in patchouli-scented health-food stores. During the next five years, domestic sales of organic food nearly doubled, to $13.8 billion annually. The figure is now around sixty billion dollars, and the industry is defined as much by large industrial dairy farms, and by frozen organic lasagna, as it is by the environmentalism and the irregularly shaped vegetables of the organic movement\u2019s pioneers.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

The development of modern organic agriculture in the U.S. was, until late in the 20th<\/sup> century, genuinely (warning: pun ahead) \u201corganic.\u201d Practiced by a relatively small cadre of interested farmers across the country, it was pursued according to a variety of definitions and practices, and evolved, in a highly diffuse fashion, as an alternative to the growing post\u2013World War II emphasis on chemical \u201cpest control\u201d in agriculture. Organic and its scientific principles, although practiced as a matter of course before that time, was brought to the mainstream in the U.S. by J.I. Rodale, Rodale Press and Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine<\/em> (1942), followed by Robert Rodale, and the Rodale Institute<\/a>. In England, Sir Albert Howard,<\/em> a botanist, wrote the 1940 book\u00a0An Agricultural Testament<\/a><\/em>, and Lady Balfour, a farmer and educator, popularized organic with the publication of The Living Soil<\/a> i<\/em>n 1943. The National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides (NCAMP), now Beyond Pesticides, formed in 1981 (after field hearings in the late 1970s) and advanced organic to eliminate hazardous chemical exposure for farmers and farmworkers, in addition to addressing the food safety and environmental protection concerns.<\/p>\r\n

Organic in the marketplace began with support from a loyal group of consumers who sought out organic through farm stands and farmers markets, community-supported agriculture (CSAs), food cooperatives, and buying clubs. As the nonprofit SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) writes<\/a>, \u201cAlthough there was general agreement on philosophical approaches, no standards or regulations existed defining organic agriculture. The first certification programs were decentralized, meaning that each state or certifying agent could determine standards based on production practices and constraints in their region.\u201d Even prior to state involvement, voluntary standards were organized by producers under the Organic Foods Production Association of North America (OFPANA) and nonprofit certifiers.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The lack of a unified definition of \u201corganic\u201d across the states moved Congress to pass, in 1990, the Organic Foods Production Act<\/a> (OFPA), which called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to create organic standards and regulations for producers, processors, and certifiers \u2014 what came to be the National Organic Standards<\/a> (NOS). The legislation also created the NOSB (National Organic Standards Board<\/a>), an advisory entity that evaluates and recommends substances that may and may not be used in organic production. These elements comprise the National Organic Program<\/a> (NOP), rules that were finalized in 2002.<\/p>\r\n

Only those food and fiber products grown and processed within the rules of the NOS can bear the USDA Certified Organic label. The NOS rules codify organic principles<\/a> into regulations for what is allowed, not allowed, and required for certification. The Certified Organic label is the symbol of a system that is well defined, based on verifications, and critically, trusted by stakeholders in the food system \u2014 consumers, producers, processors, and retailers. Mr. Parker astutely notes<\/a>, \u201cMore than in most retail transactions, the\u00a0organic consumer\u00a0is buying both a thing and an assurance about a thing.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Now, the reality is that a stalk of organic broccoli and a stalk of conventionally grown broccoli cannot be assayed to say which is organic. It is actually the production land itself, and the management of it (or in the case of livestock, the facility where they are raised), that is certified organic. Food grown on that land (or animals raised at that facility), according to the NOS rules, can be labeled \u201corganic.\u201d Thus, the organic sector relies on the integrity of the regulations, but also that of the certifiers and inspectors, and to some extent, the producers, to ensure the accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness of the organic label.<\/p>\r\n

This is how the NOP certification and inspection processes do<\/em> work: producers and handlers of organic products are required to be certified by a USDA accredited certifying agent in order to make the claim that their products are USDA Certified Organic. Certifying agents make annual visits to farms and processing plants, and can make unannounced visits to ensure that a farm, ranch, or other facility is in compliance with the NOS.<\/p>\r\n

Farmers have to talk with the agent, answer questions, and provide to the certifier a comprehensive plan that covers the land history of all production fields; pest, weed, and disease management; fertility and nutrient-management; and origins of, and feed and healthcare for, any livestock. A grower must report all products\/inputs used on the farm (such as fertilizers and pesticides), as well as rates and dates of their application. Failure to report a product used puts the grower out of compliance, and results in a reprimand and\/or revocation of certification. (For a complete explanation of these standards see the NOS<\/a>.)<\/p>\r\n

The independent\u00a0Organic Materials Review Institute<\/a>\u00a0(OMRI) is an additional organization engaged with certification. It reviews products used in organic production to assess their compliance with the NOS. The OMRI list<\/a> is used widely as the most comprehensive list of products approved for organic production, but not all products approved for organic production by the NOS are listed with OMRI.<\/p>\r\n

The New Yorker<\/em> article<\/a> is written as an intriguing story about an episode of gross malfeasance that unfolded in the organic grain sector from roughly 2001 through 2018. The story centers on Randy Constant, who managed, over the course of those years, to engage a half-dozen other men in his multiple shady business ventures \u2014 nearly all of which involved deception and\/or outright fraud. The scheme for which he was ultimately convicted, according to the article, \u201chad led to more than a hundred and forty-two million dollars in sales of fake organic grain between 2010 and 2017.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Mr. Constant\u2019s schemes were enacted largely through (1) his purchases of truckloads or rail cars of conventional corn and soybeans (sometimes at remote locations so as to escape notice), and then passing them off as organic, and (2) exploiting the certification process by getting his primary business entity, \u201cOrganic Land Management,\u201d certified on the basis of one or two of its farms, but then buying up additional, nonorganic grain and claiming it as \u201corganic.\u201d The article reports, \u201cThe scheme . . . is the largest-known fraud in the history of American organic agriculture: prosecutors accused him of causing customers to spend at least a quarter of a billion dollars on products falsely labelled with organic seals.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In 2001, a purchaser of Mr. Constant\u2019s \u201corganic\u201d grain tested the shipment for evidence of genetic modification (GM). (Foods can<\/em> be tested to determine whether they come from genetically modified seeds and plants.) Non\u2013genetically modified crops might be organic or nonorganic, but no GM crop can legitimately be organic. The shipment was, in fact, genetically modified. That moment is when some people stopped dealing with Mr. Constant; yet his deceptive dealings continued for some years.<\/p>\r\n

Although Mr. Parker\u2019s article seems to imply that the nefarious activity of Randy Constant, the primary \u201cbad guy\u201d in his story, is somehow a function of the organic sector itself, this is a claim without context. There are plenty of examples of greed, malfeasance, and shady business dealings to go around; these are hardly confined to the organic food system.<\/p>\r\n

As Beyond Pesticides Executive Director Jay Feldman points out, \u201cThis [article] is a piece about scammers and greedy people who knew they were violating the law. But is that any different than in conventional agriculture, or in other areas of society? Yes, we can strengthen inspections, recordkeeping, and enforcement, but as with all law and policy, there will be people who care more about their profits than about the intention and purposes of the laws they are violating. For perspective, the author should have given readers a true sense of the conventional chemical-intensive side of agriculture \u2014 all the contamination and poisoning that go on, and the undercurrent of fraud and abuse. Were we to consider just litigation that Beyond Pesticides has brought, which is only a tip of the iceberg \u2014 against General Mills<\/a>, TruGreen<\/a>, Sargento<\/a>, and others \u2014 we would find companies that have been forced to change their fraudulent misrepresentation of their products as safe or natural. And those are just about corporate advertising!\u201d<\/p>\r\n

The damaging impacts of chemical-intensive agriculture \u2014 and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA\u2019s) failures<\/a> to act protectively on these chemicals \u2014 are legion. Impacts on human health<\/a>, ecosystems and vulnerable species<\/a>, soils<\/a>, wildlife<\/a>, pollinators and biodiversity<\/a>, and climate<\/a> are evidence that, as Mr. Feldman says, \u201cwe live in a polluted world, a toxic soup, that has been foisted on us by the agrichemical industry and other industrial groups.\u201d Witness, for example:<\/p>\r\n