National Organic Program to be audited!
On August 4, the Washington Post ran a story about requests from the organic community to clean up inconsistencies and omissions in the National Organic Program (NOP) and bring its practices in line with more stringent international organic standards. The House and Senate approved an expenditure of $500,000 to conduct an independent audit of the program and its certifying agencies.
The USDA has now announced the audit. Why is this needed? As the new USDA deputy secretary Kathleen Merrigan puts it, this step is part of department efforts “to strengthen the integrity of the NOP and to build the organic community’s trust in the program.”
Distrust, as we learned when the British Food Standards Agency released its report on the nutritional equivalence of organic and conventionally grown crops, is rampant (see previous post). The public deeply distrusts the integrity of the organic standards, the honesty of the inspection process, and the claims made for the benefits of organic foods.
When I reviewed the organic program in preparation for writing What to Eat, I was impressed by how everyone connected with organics thought the system worked well and was honest. That’s not what I’m hearing these days.
This audit is badly needed. Let’s hope the Commerce Department auditors hold the NOP to the highest possible standards.
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Comments
Sounds like the corporate farming interests who run the USDA are running a little scared. It’s not the small organic farmers who have caused national panic in the country because of the e. coli found in their products.
I would say that the public has deep distrust in the food system, period. Organic is the current scapegoat because 1) ‘traditional’ (ie. the past 60 years) farming lobbyists are scaremongering organic as a scapegoat to divert attention to its treatment of animals, overuse of petroleum for fertilizing and shipping, and rampant food safety issues; 2) consumers feel a need to pick on organic to justify their desire to spend less on food regardless of the impact on animal or environmental welfare; 3) USDA has opened the door to questioning organic due to its lax ‘lowest common denominmator’ standards.
I would much rather the $500,000 be spent auditing the ‘traditional’ food systems — abuse of fertilizers, pesticides, monocultures, antibiotics, animals.
However, if this leads to stronger organic standards, I guess something positive could come from it.
It’s not organic farming that worries me, but the industrial-scale organic farms and related systems (like distribution), but you aren’t going to feed a 300 million person nation without an industrial-based food system. Lucky I can do CSA with an organic farm and avoid mega food stores with their shelves 90% full of processed crap, no better example of this than the yogurt section, where a big store has almost no basic, plain yogurt but is full of bio-boosted mega-health product festooned with health claims that do one thing for certain: boost the unit price? What ever happened to just “food?”
Hey Sid you can actually feed the nation, because there are small farmers nationwide who are not paid enough and who have leftover food that they cannot sell.
Please read ANIMAL VEGETABLE MINERAL and get your facts straight.
Besides, people can feed themselves with a small victory garden and subsidize their diet with food bought from farmers.
not to mention the fact that the “farms” producing our food right now are producing over 4000 calories for every man, woman, and child in the nation per day. we could surely be using some of that extra energy to farm more responsibly.
very interesting read, many thanks. nice one.