By Julie Kelly
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, the grocer that
brought pricey organic food to the masses, comes during a time of turmoil in
the organic industry: The Department of Agriculture is continuing to
investigate the importation of millions of pounds of phony organic grains. The
move is in response to a lengthy Washington Post exposé published in
May that tracked shipments of corn and soybeans from Turkey, Romania, and
Ukraine that were labeled “organic” but were not (I wrote about it here).
The Post
reported that the fraudulent imports were “large enough to constitute a
meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those commodities,” a troubling
development that should raise serious questions about the veracity of the organic
label, since these grains are mostly being used as livestock feed to meet
National Organic Program’s (NOP) standards. Organic meat and dairy products
must be sourced from animals fed only organic grains; this has led to an
enormous surge in imports over the past few years, since nearly all the corn
and soybeans grown here are from genetically modified seeds, verboten in
organic production. Organic soybean imports have jumped sixfold from 2011, and
organic corn imports have quadrupled since 2013; Turkey is now the largest
exporter of both crops to the U.S.
A USDA spokeswoman confirmed to me that an investigation
is ongoing and said the agency has already revoked the license of one Turkish
handler. (Organic verification is done by an outside party, not by the USDA
directly; 82 certifiers oversee 31,000 organic farms and businesses in 111
countries and the U.S.) The spokeswoman also said the agency is “currently
investigating other evidence related to shipments of soybeans and corn. These
investigations will continue in the coming weeks, and NOP will issue additional
notices and notifications if there is clear evidence of violations.” The USDA
cannot suspend imports from these countries as the investigation proceeds, but
it has notified importers about the fraudulent grains.
But this problem extends far beyond a few shady
international grain dealers. Organic companies have used these non-organic
grains in their products and either knowingly or unwittingly sold those goods
as certified organic. The Organic Foods Production Act does not authorize
recalls of organic products, but the USDA can revoke a company’s organic
certification and levy a fine of up to $11,000 per violation. It will be
interesting to see if the USDA penalizes any domestic producers for knowingly
using phony grains.
While the Post
exposed only three shipments of fake grains, it’s safe to assume this has been
going on for some time, with perhaps a wink and a nod from folks throughout the
organic supply chain. No one questioned how Turkey suddenly became our leading
supplier of organic corn and soybeans when those imports were nonexistent just
a few years ago? This is more than someone just being asleep at the switch;
this is selective ignorance on a large scale.
All of this finally prompted the nation’s largest organic
lobbying group, the Organic Trade Association (OTA), to take action. Last
month, the group formed a Global Organic Supply Chain Integrity Task Force to
“develop a best practices guide to use in managing and verifying global organic
supply chain integrity to help brands and traders manage and mitigate the risk
and occurrence of organic fraud.” This might be long overdue, since
organic-goods imports are skyrocketing. According to OTA estimates,
organic-corn imports more than quadrupled between 2013 and 2016, while
organic-soybean imports more than doubled.
OTA spokeswoman Maggie McNeil told me that the group’s
“top priority is to protect the integrity of organic. We support strong and
robust oversight and enforcement of organic certification practices and
standards both inside and outside of the U.S.” The group will ask for more
money in the 2018 farm bill, including a 10 percent annual increase in the
NOP’s budget and $5 million to upgrade technology systems for international trade-tracking
systems and data collection.
But until the USDA concludes its investigation and all
responsible parties are held accountable for this massive fraud in our food
supply, no additional tax money should go to fund the NOP. Indeed, Congress
should reconsider whether the NOP, which is designed as a marketing program,
should be under the federal government’s purview at all. Meghan Cline, a
spokeswoman for the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, told
me that the committee “will be taking a close look at the NOP as part of the
upcoming Farm Bill reauthorization process.”
In the meantime, consumers of the $47 billion organic
market who pay a premium for organic food should take a hard look at what
they’re paying for. Folks buy organic because visions of a local farmer growing
crops and feeding them carefully to his animals dance in their heads. Now that
we know this is patently false, and that most of the organic foodstuff in our
supply is shipped here from other countries, maybe it’s time to reconsider
paying double for that quart of organic milk. Especially since it’s likely the
cow is being fed phony grains from Turkey.
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