Corporate Lobbyists/Influence Peddlers Eroding Organic Standards
Analysis Illustrates USDA/Agribusiness Collusion
National Organic Standards Board Voting Scorecard Released
A
comprehensive voting analysis of members of the National Organic
Standards Board, an expert body formed by Congress to insulate the
governance of the industry from undue corporate influence, clearly
illustrates how illegal appointments to the board by current and past
USDA Secretaries have subverted congressional intent.
The study, produced by The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group,
analyzed the voting record
of each individual board member over the past five years, including
corporate representatives who were placed on the National Organic
Standards Board (NOSB) filling seats that were specifically set aside
for farmers and other independent organic industry stakeholders.
“In
recent years, just as with the polarized U.S. Supreme Court, many
critical issues were decided by one-vote margins,” said Mark A. Kastel,
Codirector and Senior Farm Policy Analyst at
Cornucopia.
“Almost universally, the NOSB is split along ideological lines
(corporate agribusiness versus farmers and consumers) on whether to
allow controversial synthetic and non-organic additives in organic food
or weak animal husbandry standards utilizing the ‘factory farm’
production of organic meat, eggs and dairy products.”
Cornucopia’s analysis comes two years after the policy group released a white paper entitled
The Organic Watergate.
That report documented how a number of risky and/or gimmicky synthetic
or non-organic materials were approved for use in organics. It
highlighted a couple of board members, appointed as “farmers,” who did
not meet the intent and legal qualifications that Congress had set out
for composition of the board.
“We have two members of the current
board, both sitting in seats that Congress had designated for someone
who must ‘own or operate an organic farming operation’ but who were
actually agribusiness employees when appointed to the five-year term on
the NOSB,” said Kastel.
Of the four seats reserved for farmers on
the current board, one is held by an employee of the giant California
berry marketing firm, Driscoll’s (which does not grow organic
strawberries but rather relies on contract farmers) and one by an
individual who, when appointed, worked for the country’s largest organic
marketing cooperative, CROPP ($928 million in annual revenue). The
voting records of these two agribusiness employees are significantly
lower than those of the actual farmer members of the NOSB.
Voting
records for the current 15-member NOSB board members include three
independent members with a history of voting over 90% of the time to
block practices eroding organic integrity. These board members are
Jennifer Taylor, public interest/consumer representative and academic;
Jay Feldman, environmentalist and executive director of Beyond
Pesticides; and Colehour Bondera, a certified organic farmer from
Hawaii.
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, the
agribusiness voting bloc all had voting records under 50%, with one
member voting with mainstream positions on maintaining organic integrity
only 10% of the time.
Voting scores of NOSB agribusiness
representatives include those of Harold Austin (10% — handler with
Zirkle Fruit), John Foster (16% — handler with WhiteWave/Earthbound
Farms), Carmella Beck (17% — “farmer” with Driscoll’s) and Wendy
Fulwider (34% — “farmer” with Organic Valley/Whole Foods-GAP).
The
study’s analysis was based on Cornucopia’s policy positions over the
past five years, prepared by experienced organic farmers, policy
experts, former certification officials, and staff scientists with
doctorates in related agricultural disciplines.
“The policy
positions Cornucopia has publicly taken (and used for the scoring
criteria) are clearly in the mainstream of thought within the organic
community and are consistent with those taken by the vast majority of
other consumer, environmental and farmer-supported organizations,”
Kastel affirmed.
Kastel noted that a separate analysis by
Cornucopia compared the industry watchdog’s official written and oral
public testimony on issues before the NOSB with that of other nonprofit
groups.
That analysis showed that Cornucopia’s policy positions
were 100% compatible with that of 10 of the 12 nonprofit groups actively
involved in lobbying at the NOSB over the past two years, including the
Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, Organic Consumers
Association, Beyond Pesticides, and Consumers Union. Cornucopia scored
an 86% compatibility with the policy positions of the National Organic
Coalition, an umbrella group made up of farm organizations, retailers,
and organic businesses.
Dominic Marchese, a long-time certified
organic beef producer from Farmdale, Ohio, observed: “If the USDA had
complied with the law, and appointed somebody like myself, a working
organic farmer who met the qualifications to serve on the NOSB set up by
Congress, instead of corporate imposters, many of the close votes over
the last five years would have gone the other way.”
Marchese had
applied for the NOSB three times in past years. One of those years saw
USDA Secretary Vilsack choosing Driscoll’s Carmela Beck for the farmer
seat.
In addition to the well-defined “independent” and
“corporate” voting blocs, Cornucopia found that about a quarter of the
board qualified as true
swing voters.
“After the publication of
The Organic Watergate,
a number of board members and other organic industry stakeholders,
including myself, were surprised by the degree that the NOSB system of
vetting synthetics and non-organic materials allowed for temporary use
in organics was just plain not working,” said Cornucopia’s Kastel.
In addition to corporate members being illegally appointed to the board, Cornucopia’s
Organic Watergate
report also uncovered that agribusiness executives and consultants had
been hired by the USDA to do “independent” technical reviews of
materials brought before the board. The apparent conflict of interest
and bias of these contractors is highly disturbing since the NOSB is not
a scientific panel and Congress provided for access to independent
scientists to advise the body.
“I think the more recent record of
some swing voters indicates that the NOSB is now taking a much more
critical view of what is presented to the board by the corporate
lobbyists that claim the materials are essential to organic production,”
Kastel added.
The law governing organic production, the Organic
Foods Production Act of 1990, calls for the NOSB to vet all non-organic
materials to assure they are not a danger to human health or the
environment and are actually necessary for the production of organic
food.
Cornucopia’s analysis shows that some swing voters have seen
their voting scores materially change over the past two years. As an
example, the voting record of newly elected board chairperson Jean
Richardson, a respected academic and former organic inspector, has moved
up to 67%.
Cornucopia has stated that one of their goals in
performing this research is to illustrate to the Secretary of
Agriculture that his appointments will be closely scrutinized in terms
of legality and as to whether he has sold out the organic movement
through undermining the will of Congress and the majority of industry
participants in favor of corporate profit and expansion.
“We also
want to make sure we hold the corporations accountable that have
employees on the board, corporations like Whole Foods, WhiteWave
(Earthbound Farms/Horizon/Silk), General Mills (Cascadian Farms/Muir
Glen), and Driscoll’s,” said Kastel. “If you want our patronage the
performance of your employees on this board has to be consistent with
your marketing rhetoric in support of organics.”
Many organic
farming pioneers would never have supported the USDA overseeing the
industry they founded if Congress hadn’t agreed to create a strong NOSB
as a defense against
business as usual in Washington, an all-too-common cozy working relationship between agribusiness lobbyists and the USDA.
Observed
Barry Flamm, immediate past chair of the NOSB, “I hope the Cornucopia
analysis of voting records, which will continue going forward, will
forewarn NOSB members that their voting behavior will be closely
scrutinized and, if they are employees of corporations or certifiers
with economic interests, that some of their customers will also be
judging their service on the board as well.”
MORE:
The
Cornucopia Institute’s analysis included all contested NOSB votes in
the prior five years (for both current and past board members). It can
be found at
http://www.cornucopia.org/nosb-scorecard/. (Once
opened, scroll to the lower right corner of the page where a small tool
bar will appear in black. Click several times on the magnifying glass
with a “+” inside it to enlarge the image.)
Cornucopia’s analysis
of the policy positions of other nonprofit organizations, corporate
participants (processors, marketers, retailers, trade organizations, and
certifiers) can be found at
http://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/NOSB-Scorecard-NGO-positions-v7.pdf.
(Once opened, scroll to the lower right corner of the page where a
small tool bar will appear in black. Click several times on the
magnifying glass with a “+” inside it to enlarge the image.)
After the publication of
The Organic Watergate,
the NOSB began to take a more judicious approach, becoming more
skeptical of corporate lobbyists’ safety and essentiality claims about
synthetic and non-organic materials. In response, last fall the USDA’s
National Organic Program unilaterally changed the rules on removing
these materials from the National List of ingredients approved in
organics. The new rules make it demonstrably harder to remove these
substances every five years as they “sunset.”
A broad section of
the organic community has vigorously protested these moves, which were
made, in conflict with the law, with no input from either the NOSB or
the organic community at large. Protesters have included the two key
congressional authors of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990,
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Representative Peter DeFazio of
Oregon.
Examples of hypocrisies by corporate representatives on the board include:
1. Representatives of
Whole Foods and
Organic Valley
voting for, at sunset, continued use of the coagulant and thickening
agent carrageenan, when their respective companies utilize the
ingredient in their products.
Carrageenan has been controversial
for years, with all industry-funded studies declaring it perfectly safe
while independent medical researchers (mostly funded by the National
Institutes of Health) find it to be a potent intestinal inflammatory
agent causing serious disease and even cancer.
Many industry
observers contend that representatives of companies like Whole Foods and
Organic Valley, due to conflict of interest, should not be permitted to
participate on NOSB votes that economically benefit their employers.
2.
When the NOSB debated tighter standards, in an effort to force
industrial-scale livestock producers to provide outdoor access for
laying hens and other poultry, the Organic Valley employee on the NOSB
voted in favor of providing a minimum of 2 ft.², outdoors, for each
laying hen.
Organic Valley sets standards for their own farmers
requiring a minimum of 5 ft.². In the European Union chickens are
required to have a minimum of 43 ft.² of pasture and no more than 3,000
birds per building. Currently in the U.S., factory farms producing the
majority of all “organic” eggs are providing no legitimate outdoor
access, in buildings that hold as many as 100,000 birds.
Agricultural
policy experts at Cornucopia have stated that a 2 ft.² requirement
would be woefully inadequate in terms of meeting the intent of the
organic standards, promoting the humane treatment of animals,
environmental protection and producing eggs with superior taste and
nutritional profiles.
The Cornucopia Institute has also warned
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack that it would be viewed as “hostile and
cynical” if he made a new appointment to the NOSB of someone who
technically qualified as a farmer but has acted as a spokesperson for a
major corporate player in the organic arena.
As an example, Dean
Foods/WhiteWave has paid thousands to fly farmers around the country
representing the company, including in front of the NOSB.
“Although these farmers might legally be qualified as ‘owning or operating an organic farm,’ they would surely be viewed as
carrying the water for their corporate benefactors, once again undermining the collaborative framework that Congress had intended,” said Kastel.
Another separate scorecard that contains all of the votes, including the uncontested votes, can be found at:
http://www.cornucopia.org/NOSB-Scorecard-all-votes.pdf
Hello, this is Eric Hjerstedt Sharp, your host for this the first in the Bay Wave's Literary Series – Great Lake Great Writers, click here:TheBayWavewhere we talk to writers who have written about people, places and events around the Lake Superior basin.
Today we talk to Steve Lehto from Michigan, the author of Death's Door: The Truth Behind the Italian Hall Disaster and the Strike of 1913, first published by Momentum Books in 2006 and already in its 4th printing. The book won a Michigan Notable Book award in 2006 and has been widely reviewed.
