The Organic Consumers Association reports that the amount of fraud related to organic food certification is on the rise and is gathering signatures for a petition to the National Organic Program (NOP) to implement the Peer Review Panel.
USDA Admits Organic Fraud is Increasing
The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (NOP) announced on August 5th that 15 of the 30 accredited organic certifiers they recently inspected failed the USDA audit and will have 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation with the NOP. It is clear that there are numerous violations of organic standards taking place in the U.S. and across the world. (Read the August 5 NOP Audit Report here)
A number of the violations noted in the several hundred page audit related to Chinese imports certified by the French-based organic certifier Ecocert and other certifiers. Strangely enough, Quality Assurance International (QAI), the largest organic certifier in the world, is not cited by the USDA, even though the OCA has recently reviewed documents that indicate that QAI is indeed under investigation by the NOP.
QAI has recently been in the news for sourcing ginger, contaminated with a dangerous and banned pesticide, Aldicarb, from its Chinese certification sub-contractors and then labeling it as "USDA Organic." (Watch news video coverage of this issue here). QAI is also under public fire, along with other certifiers, for certifying factory farm feedlot dairies supplying milk to Horizon and Aurora Organic Dairy, who in turn supply Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, and other organic private label organic milk. (Learn more)
For six years the OCA and the organic community have called upon the USDA to implement a "Peer Review Panel" system, as required by law in the National Organic Standards, so that respected members of the organic community can monitor and police violations of organic standards on the part of producers, importers, and certifiers.
As the USDA themselves have admitted "The National Organic Standards call for the Administrator of AMS (USDA Agricultural Marketing Service) to appoint members of a Peer Review Panel to evaluate the NOP¹s adherence to its accreditation procedures and its accreditation decisions." It's time for the USDA to stop dragging their heels and begin the public process to set up an organic community "Peer Review Panel," so can we can start policing organic standards ourselves.
Text of Petition:
Petition to the National Organic Program,
We, the undersigned, are calling on the National Organic Program (NOP) to implement the Peer Review Panel.
After 40 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a healthy, sustainable, and equitable multi-billion dollar alternative to energy and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. Now a number of large so-called "organic" corporations and foreign importers, aided and abetted by unscrupulous certifiers and their sub-contractors, are violating the letter and the spirit of organic integrity, allowing factory farm production and bogus, at times toxic, "organic" imports from countries like China to degrade the "USDA Organic" label.
As you yourselves at the NOP have admitted on your website for the past six years, "The National Organic Standards call for the Administrator of AMS (USDA Agricultural Marketing Service) to appoint members of a Peer Review Panel to evaluate the NOP's adherence to its accreditation procedures and its accreditation decisions." It's time for the USDA National Organic Program to stop dragging its heels and begin the legally required public process to set up an accountable and transparent organic community "Peer Review Panel."
We obviously need this Safeguard Organic Standards Panel more than ever so that can we can start helping the NOP (obviously under funded and understaffed with a meager annual budget to police a giant industry) carry out its important task of monitoring and policing organic producers, importers, and certifiers.
