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All organic farms are not being inspected annually — a requirement of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 — and the USDA has failed the entire industry yet again.
This is alleged in a bombshell new lawsuit against the USDA, which also asserts “that the agency has turned a blind eye to illegal, ‘shadow’ organic certification bodies for many, many years.” If true, this will have caused irreparable harm to the USDA organic seal and untold financial damage to legitimate U.S.-based organic farmers, not to mention the extraordinary amount of fraudulent organic products that may have ended up in the shopping baskets of unsuspecting consumers.
At issue is something called “grower groups,” a term that is mentioned or referred to nowhere in the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA).
Prior to OFPA being ratified by Congress and enacted into the marketplace in 2002, grower groups were a way for extremely small producers (coffee, chocolate, tea and other specialty crops) in developing countries to be constituted into one group, or cooperative, and with one representative, possibly an elder in the community, overseeing everything. This mechanism would give them access to the valuable U.S. market without being hamstrung by overly burdensome and costly regulations.
However, as the organic industry surged in popularity and became a multibillion-dollar industry, grower groups were believed to be manipulated by agribusiness entities and compliant certifiers worldwide, according to industry watchdogs, which resulted in their circumventing the rules and avoiding direct USDA oversight.
The narrative was that agribusinesses created agreements with for-profit accredited certifiers so that they, instead of the certifier itself, would inspect the members of the agribusiness’ own supplier base.
As per the lawsuit, not only were these agribusiness entities doing the organic certification not recognized by the USDA as an approved organic certifier, but there was no restriction on how many participants were in these grower groups, how large individual farms could be or the limit of geographical range. Furthermore, these agribusiness entities didn’t even need to be farmers themselves.
THE MYSTERIOUSLY LOW PRICES OF HAZELNUTS
Bruce Kaser, an organic hazelnut grower in Oregon, suspected that something was amiss when he noticed that organic hazelnut imports from Turkey were flooding the U.S. market at prices barely above conventional nuts.
With a background as a decades-long attorney, he knew how to navigate the bureaucracy of the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and asked the agency to investigate the situation, spurred by his own research that found no certified organic Turkish hazelnut growers in the USDA’s “Organic Integrity” database despite being the leading importer into the United States.
The investigation resulted in damning information from the USITC — that USDA-accredited certifiers were issuing organic “crops” certificates directly to agribusiness food processors, which made the farmers invisible and untraceable.
After joining forces with the well-known organic industry watchdog OrganicEye, Bruce Kaser then filed a formal legal complaint with the USDA this past July.
With the USDA failing to respond, other than acknowledging receipt of the complaint, he subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA in the District Court in Oregon a few weeks ago.
The basis of the lawsuit is that according to OFPA, all organic farms must be certified annually by a qualified and approved organic certifier. As such, the plaintiff is asking the District Court to declare grower group certifications illegal and direct the USDA federal officer in charge of the USDA’s National Organic Program, currently Dr. Jennifer Tucker, to instruct certifiers to cease grower group certifications immediately.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
While some organic advocates might point to the newly adopted Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) rule as a remedy to this situation, there are two things to consider.
First, SOE does address grower groups and says that “certifying agents must inspect at least 1.4 times the square root or 2% of the total number of producer group members, whichever is higher.” So, that still leaves 98% of the group members not inspected by the certifier.
This new formula continues to violate OFPA, as per the lawsuit.
Second, since the USDA has now codified grower groups, or producer groups, into federal law with SOE, it is no longer something that the USDA can sweep under the carpet and ignore, just as it has done with the complaint filed in July.
According to Bruce Kaser, there is a statute that allows federal courts to review new rules and whether they are legal, consistent or inconsistent with the statute, and now that grower groups are in the federal code, this will actually help the lawsuit get seen by the District Court in Oregon.
“The USDA and the National Organic Standards Board have been collaborating in a way that perpetuates this fraud, to the complete detriment of consumers and farmers who are following the letter and spirit of the law,” he said.
“This is just another example of the USDA collaborating with corporate interests and abusing public trust,” said OrganicEye’s Mark Kastel. “We’ve seen it with fraudulent organic grains being allowed into the country, we have seen it with “organic” livestock factories and hydroponics being allowed, and now we have seen it with “shadow” organic certifiers being allowed to operate. Anyone who tells you that grower groups are not a problem is simply unaware of the profound conflict of interest or not telling you the truth.”
As a result of the lawsuit filed in Oregon, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME) sent a letter to USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack and asked for an investigation of fraud.
(Bruce Kaser, at his organic hazelnut farm in Oregon.)
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Max Goldberg, Founder |
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