USDA Organic Certification “Untrustworthy”

LA FARGE, WIS. — One of the nation’s leading nonprofit advocacy groups supporting organic agriculture and food production, OrganicEye, after years of trying to remediate corruption at the USDA’s National Organic Program, has said that it is now advising shoppers to no longer universally trust federal oversight.

OrganicEye, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group that is best known as an organic industry watchdog, recently released a shoppers’ guide listing 10 top USDA-accredited certifiers that have taken it upon themselves to judiciously enforce both the spirit and the letter of federal law governing organics.

“In 1990, Congress charged the USDA with harmonizing and enforcing a single standard that consumers and eaters could depend on when shopping for organic food,” said Mark A. Kastel, OrganicEye’s Executive Director. “But the agency has willfully failed, and many of the 40 domestic and 32 international certifiers they oversee have accepted huge sums from their ‘clients,’ allowing practices that we contend are in blatant violation of federal law — with the USDA intentionally looking the other way.”

Organic farmers, along with organizations representing both consumers and agricultural producers, have long complained about the USDA “kowtowing” to agribusiness interests by allowing industrial practices that they allege clearly violate regulatory language and the enabling statute itself, the Organic Foods Production Act.