Thanks for that link. The story on that home page is telling. It also confirms a main problem facing organic food (narrowly - produce, and more broadly, food) in the present; being diverted away from the traditional real world it came from while beign gradually steered towards the same twilight-zone parallel universe that increasingly permeates these days. The latter is an aspect of our world where, to the casual observer, it looks & sounds like the real thing, which may be nice for the casual observer as far as this goes if it were not for one problem; it isn't. One really never knows which of the two to expect these days. Before one walks down to the other end of a street, or around the other side of a corner, which one does one suppose they may confront?; a slice of the old & traditional, or another slab of the burgeoning twilight zone?  The world of organic food seems to be somewhat on the cusp; not fully there, yet, but neither is it where it once was by tradition. Maybe this explains why there are two main groups with interest. The one is the relative few who genuinely want to hang onto the tradition of what organic food truly is.... or at least was before the hired word smiths and legal linguists employed by Corp Twilight Zone regulators came along and began sucking the organic life out of the tradition while pumping it full of exploitative, adulterated, standardized, legislated new speak fluff. Apparently "organic" was not a sufficient-enough term already, so now we have "certified organic". The other is where the significantly larger numbers are, waiting, who don't give a bleep about the nutritional value of genuinely organic food, they merely want to pay lip service to the idea, payoff whatever Vinny the Corp regulator says will dub them "certified" so that they can then proceed to getting down to the serious business of pandering to things organic in this new outlet of the twilight zone. 

In 2002, when the Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program established federal organic standards...

Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, as far as establishing organic produce standards that by all appearances are genuine and fair standards that producers will then adhere to, uniformly, that 02' benchmark by USDA, in and of it's self, looks nice and all that as far as this goes.... but pardon my suspicion that such a standard (at that time) was more about subterfuge necessary to faciliate a critical inching forwards towards regulating an emerging industry - $$, merely another step towards where they want to ultimately be on "organic"; total control, replete with old words and old terms totally re-packaged in new definitions that establish the agenda of a new market, a place where pretty much all commercial industries end up these days. Far as I'm concerned, USDA's 02' benchmark was like so much Mammoth getting it's foot proverbially in the door, and once Mammoth Corp Anybody gets their foot in a door, even a crack, that door's job -allowing and or prohibiting passage, is over, finsished, ended. 

That's why it is a shame that the Organic Trade Association - a food-industry group whose members include such giants as Kraft, Dean Foods and General Mills, which own national organic brands - is seeking to dilute the organic standards.

Color me a looney theorist, call me a paranoid whacko, but the perps making up the aforementioned OTA look to be on a par with and about as wholesome and genuine as was Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dalmer being esteemed members of the Baby Sitter's Association, and Al Capone and Bugsy Malone being upstanding charter members of the ever-trusted Friendly Financier's Association.

The prospects for maintaining the value and tradition of organic food is likely to be a battle not unlike most other worthy realities of tradition one may be interested in preserving these days. Learn more. Try to educate others along the way. Patronize the small mom N pop outlets and or the somwhat larger co-ops as they may be available and as seems fit.  Meanwhile, don't expect somebody else to do the job for you. Especially avoid the trap of being convinced that some big-time organization is somehow going to rise above the twilight zone, put big brother in it's place, and save the day for the world.