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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Organic Standards Weakend by Congress


Okay it's official, the organic standards are meaningless. But we can still buy from local and sustainable farms that do this for more than $$$

Lucy

From the SANET listserv:

Despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members and the organic community, Republican leaders in Congress October 27 attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to weaken the nation's organic food standards in response to pressure from large-scale food manufacturers. "Congress voted last night to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years. As passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows: Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the public based on "emergency decrees."

Under pressure from big agribusiness, the USDA is deliberately refusing to take action against factory farm dairy feedlots who are unethically selling their products as "organic." This blatant labeling fraud is compounded by a loophole in federal organic regulations that is allowing unscrupulous organic dairy farms to import young calves from non-organic conventional farms (where the animals have been weaned on cow blood, injected or medicated with antibiotics, and fed genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton seeds, laced with slaughterhouse waste and tainted animal fats). These confinement and feeding practices are inhumane, unhealthy, environmentally unsustainable, and unfair to the majority of organic dairy farmers, who follow strict organic principles on pasture access and animal feed, and do not import animals into their herds from conventional farms.

See from OCA these related stories;

Organic Farmers & Consumers Protest Sneak Attack on Organic Standards by Congress

Exposing the Organic Trade Association's Fallacies and Deception on the Sneak Attack on Organic Standards


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I signed the petition and knew it would fail. It hasn't been about the "people" in this country for a very long time. My next question is - can we get a list of these companies. I'll still buy organic, but will now scrutinize who I buy from. What a sad state we are coming to.

Lucy said...

Go to the OCA website and they have lots of information about who is organic ansd who is not.

my advice is to fget to know your local farmers and buy directly from them. This is the only way you can be certain of what you are eating.

It took me about 7 years to build a local food web for myself but back than there were few of us farmers selling direct to the public and now there are more and more all the time and others who have made local food webs so it should not take nearly as long as 7 years. but now i eat about a 75% local diet and am the better for it.