Organic food and fiber sales grew to $35 billion in 2013. The organic civil war

SAN ANTONIO — The organic apple in your lunch might come from a tree treated with an antibiotic. The organic milk in your coffee this morning could have come from a cow that — a little more than a year ago — could be found on a conventional farm, treated with antibiotics and fed non-organic grain. And that organic chicken in the oven? There’s a chance it’s been fed a synthetic amino acid.

All these things are allowed under the green and white “USDA Organic” seal on packages in the grocery store, but there’s a civil war raging in the industry over how much longer such exceptions should be permitted and how to best to get rid of them. The antibiotic used on apple trees is already on its way out.


It’s a fight that played out this week in San Antonio, where a 15-member panel charged by Congress with advising the Agriculture Department on its organic food standards haggled over a large stack of seemingly obscure rules. But while these organic food specialists were arguing over the use of streptomycin — the antibiotic used on apple trees — and methionine — the amino acid put in chicken feed — there’s a much bigger implication for that coveted “USDA Organic” label.

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Organic food and fiber sales grew to $35 billion in 2013, up 11.5 percent from 2012, and that was before recent announcements from Target and Wal-Mart that they are upping their role in the game. American consumers are increasingly looking for food that is free of pesticides, antibiotics and synthetics, leaving what was once a niche industry struggling to meet the demand for foods that are certified as organic.

“Organic is booming, and the mainstream acceptance of organic products is driving it,” said Steve Crider, liaison for government and industry affairs for Amy’s Kitchen, a California-based organic and natural food maker. Conventional retailers are enthusiastically stocking organic products, and demand is fast outpacing supply, thanks in large part to the interest of the coveted “millennial” consumer.

“We are coming into the second generation of organic consumers: the kids who were raised on this stuff by their moms,” Crider said. “They get it about food and sustainability and organic and local. They are part of the drivers of this.”

Which is why the meeting this week of the National Organic Standards Board was more than just an obscure food standards debate and the site of so much contention.

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The start of the meeting Tuesday was delayed for roughly an hour when a half-dozen consumer advocates blocked the panel with a sign that read “Safeguard Organics” and chanted “Don’t change sunset.” The event resumed after San Antonio police arrived and arrested one of the protesters.

At the crux of the protestors’ complaints is a long-standing issue within the organic industry: the pace at which non-organic and synthetic materials should be removed from the program.

When the organic standards were first crafted in the 1990s, Congress and USDA recognized that the program would have to allow for the limited use of some non-organic materials that are deemed not to have health or environmental risks, at least initially, until alternatives could be found.

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As a result, sodium bicarbonate — better known as baking soda — is permitted as a leavening agent in organic baked goods, for example. Similarly, synthetic methionine can be added to organic chicken feed to ensure the birds get the appropriate amount of amino acid.

All told, there are more than 200 synthetic, non-organic and other materials that the National Organic Program allows to be used for specific purposes in organic food products and production. To encourage the development of organic alternatives, the program’s creators crafted rules to require that such materials be re-approved every five years or “sunset” out of use.

The issue has come to a head following a September decision by USDA, made without the opportunity for public comment, to change the board’s method for reviewing the way it allows for the continued use of synthetic and non-organic materials in organic products. While all such materials will still undergo review every five years, it will now take a two-thirds vote of the board to remove each item from the list of what is accepted.

“It’s a thorough and transparent review process for all substances,” allowing for two public comment periods, Miles McEvoy, undersecretary of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service and head of the NOP, explained at the San Antonio meeting in defense of the move. Overall, the change “simplifies the process,” he said.

But organic watch-dog groups are vehement in their objections.

The move was little more than a “power grab on the part of the USDA,” Mark Kastel, head of Cornucopia Institute, told the board. Kastel and his group — which represents many small farms and the old guard of the organic food movement — have threatened to sue the government, alleging that the change should have been subject to formal rule-making procedures.

What’s more, added Lisa Bunin, organic policy director for the Center for Food Safety, the change to the rules “undermines congressional authority,” removes “the incentives of continuous improvement” and “breeds complacency.”

“Credibility of the organic brand and consumer markets is driven by organic integrity, not meeting the lowest common denominator,” Bunin said. “Market growth based on increasing the number of synthetics in organics is a recipe for failure.”

The larger organic industry, meanwhile, argues that while the ultimate goal is for organic to be as pure as possible, flexibility is needed to continue answering the growing demand of consumers.

Organic producers had petitioned the NOSB for changes in how to calculate the amount of methionine that can be used in feed given to organic poultry while the industry searches for an alternative, a matter the board voted on Friday to send back to committee to determine a solid deadline for the phase out of the material.

“Consumers expect that the sweet happy little chickens have been out there on the little family farms” running around a pasture, said Jean Richardson, an organic consultant who also serves on the board. However, that’s not entirely possible given the consumer demand for cheap food. Consumers want large eggs and large chickens, and the fast growing lines bred to produce those, even in organic production, require huge amounts of nutritional inputs.

“At the moment I actually don’t think we have much choice” but to allow for the continued use of synthetic methionine “if we really want to meet consumer demand” for organic poultry, Richardson added.

The board also was petitioned to grant a three-year extension for the approved use of streptomycin, which has helped organic apple and pear growers stave off fire blight, giving them more time to transition to non-antibiotic alternatives. The board narrowly voted, 8-7, to favor the extension. The measure failed, however, as the count did not meet the NOP’s two-thirds majority requirement on such votes. As a result, growers now have until October to phase out their use of the antibiotic.

Harold Austin, director of orchard administration for the Zirkle Fruit Company and one of the NOSB members, had argued during the board’s discussion of the issue Tuesday to allow more time to find alternatives and let “science run its course.”

Debates also are raging in the organic industry over how to handle dairy cows that initially were raised on conventional farms and what to require of organic aquaculture, where the USDA is working on standards. Some organic advocates are skeptical the organic label can be applied legitimately to seafood.

But the old guard and the big new players in the organic industry do agree on one thing when it comes to debating the rules surrounding the USDA’s organic seal. They have zero interest in seeing the label’s integrity damaged in any way.

“Consumer trust in the field is the most important thing for the long-term viability” of the organic program, said Laura Batcha, executive director of the Organic Trade Association — which counts roughly 1,100 producers among its members as members, including such titans as Horizon Foods and Earthbound Farm.

“What consumers are concerned about is the minimal list, what is used in organic production and food” that isn’t organic, she told POLITICO. The process of how things stay on or come off of the list is less important than “what those decisions are” when the NOSB does take action, and “the definitive impact about the materials in organic production.”

“It’s really a unique industry,” Batcha said. Organic producers “voluntarily choose to participate in a mandatory requirement, so the value of the seal in the market place is where it all starts and stops.”