Beauty products good enough to eat? BEAUTY

The USDA Organic Seal is administered through the National Organic Program. The USDA Organic Seal is administered through the National Organic Program. Photo: USDA Photo: USDA Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Beauty products good enough to eat? 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

To go truly organic these days, you might want to stop by the cosmetics aisle after picking out your fruit and vegetables. With the great care, and money, needed to earn USDA certification, a small but growing number of companies are hoping that having their products certified will yield a bountiful cash crop.

Think of it as tilling the soil and filling the register till.

"It's the strictest, hardest and most authentic one you can get," says author and designer Danny Seo, whose recently launched line of Whole Earth lotions and body washes bear the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Organic Seal like a little green badge of honor.

Organic makeup, lotions and body washes - which the industry calls personal care products - are not new. What is new is the determination of some companies to use the most prestigious emblem available: the government's ultra-strict food-grade standard.

Currently, the Food and Drug Administration regulates personal care products but not the term organic, which is solely the USDA's jurisdiction.

Demand for organic

Recent data show personal care products that used the term organic have increased sales 19 percent since 2007, to $443 million last year, according to the Organic Trade Association.

And in the four years since a lawsuit was brought by the Organic Consumers Association and Dr. Bronner's - an activist Southern California soap company that pressured the federal National Organic Program to include USDA organic certification for personal care products - only a fraction of the market has been able to meet the government's 95 percent standard (see "The legal battle over organic").

That's because the certification requires that not only the ingredients in the product, but also everyone involved in the manufacturing process, from the grower to the handler to the processor, be certified organic.

Satisfying the organic requirements greatly increases an item's price point, however, making it a harder sell, not only to the consumer, but also for the company. Toss in an organic product's inherently shorter shelf life - USDA standards prohibit chemical preservatives - and it's a wonder anyone would go through the hassle when Ivory makes "99.44% pure formula" bar soap for less than a buck apiece.

But organic proponents see it differently. "It's worth it to us," says Karen Behnke, founder of celebrity darling Juice Beauty, a San Francisco skin care line that uses organic juice as its product base. She says pursuing USDA organic certification ups her costs by at least 50 percent but justifies the expense: "We're mission driven and committed to our No. 1 value: authentic organic."

That kind of commitment is what consumers deserve, even if they haven't realized it yet, says Honor Schauland, Web editor of the Organic Consumers Association in Minnesota.

"If you're gonna go the extra mile to eat organic, it makes sense with putting stuff on your skin," she says.

A host of private groups offer certification, including OASIS, NSF International and Quality Assurance International in the United States, and Ecocert and the Soil Association in Europe, but none are government approved. The only exceptions are the National Organic Program's recent recognition of Canadian organic practices and state legislation in California and Utah.

Yet even if those private standards could obtain government recognition, it would be meaningless from a consumer perspective, says Michelle Barry, senior vice president of the Hartmann Group, a Seattle consumer research firm.

"Those are a waste of time," says Barry, who wrote her dissertation on the organic and sustainability movement.

"The USDA symbol is the only one that mainstream consumers can recognize. It's the most recognizable and credible symbol that would inspire consumers to try a new product in the organic non-food space. The other ones, they're just noise."

And it appears that consumers may not have to worry, with the National Organic Standards Board - the organic program's advisory panel - poised to issue its opinion on organic personal care product standards in September. A recommendation to maintain the USDA standard would be the agency's first step on the road to regulation and enforcement.

Hype in a bottle?

These moves, coupled with Dr. Bronner's latest lawsuit - claims of false advertising against seven corporations and two certifiers filed in July in San Francisco Superior Court - could bring stability to the organic sphere.

Regulation and lawsuits aside, there's also debate over whether organic skin care products are better than cheaper drugstore variety. Studies of organic food, including an English study released earlier this week, have not found much if any differences.

"It's all marketing hype, if you think about it," says Dr. Richard Glogau, a UCSF clinical professor of dermatology, who has been in private practice for 30 years.

Just because your moisturizer is made with organic grapes doesn't mean it works any better than something that has synthetic or chemical ingredients, he says. If you want truly 100 percent certified organic, save $20 and smear grape jelly on your face, he jokes.

According to Glogau, those synthetic ingredients safely improve a product's efficacy, making it sudsier or a more powerful cleaning agent, for example. Forsaking them in the name of organic labeling just isn't practical, he says.

There are some within the industry who support the creation of a government-regulated organic standard specifically designed for personal care products, not food.

Donya Fahmy, owner of Dropwise Essentials, an aromatherapy and body care company in San Francisco, says that USDA certification was too costly for her small business.

"It certainly gives some layer of consumer assurance, but it's somewhat misleading because it's very strict with what you can put in it. ... In personal care products, there are certain preservatives and other ingredients that are used for stability and shelf life," she says.

Safety first

In the end, all agree that what matters is consumer safety.

"If it's not safe to put in your mouth, it's probably not safe to put on your skin," Fahmy says. "But does that mean it has to be organic certified? No. But I would like to see some kind of standardization."

The legal battle over organic In July, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, a family owned soap manufacturer in Escondido (San Diego County), again filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court, accusing seven corporations and two certifiers - including Hain Celestial's Jason, Avalon, Kiss My Face, YSL Beaute Inc., and the certification companies Ecocert and OASIS - of false advertising under the 1946 Lanham Trademark Act. In the complaint, Dr. Bronner's alleges that these companies and certifiers allow the use of "non-organic pesticide-intensive agricultural and/or petrochemical material to make the main cleansing and moisturizing ingredients" in their organic-labeled products and are not in compliance with National Organic Program standards. Though the company supports the NOP and its advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board, and participated in the board's May meeting - a precursor to September's highly anticipated recommendation on personal care product standards - it will pursue its litigation because the regulation process simply takes too long, says President David Bronner. "We want to keep the lawsuit going as insurance," he says. "The personal care industry is devaluing the meaning behind the organic brand," the fifth-generation soapmaker says. "And those in the industry are worried about a backlash in organic foods."