Date:   10/8/2005 9:07:48 AM ( 19 y ago)
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SOS Update October 6, 2005
Over the past week, Organic Consumers Association network members have deluged the U.S. congress with over 90,000 emails and over 15,000 telephone calls. Thank you for your support. This nearly unprecedented grassroots upsurge has temporarily rattled Congress and the industry, delaying the initial Sneak Attack in the Senate on organic standards, resulting in a compromise amendment (H.R. 2744) September 21 calling for “further study of the issue.”

Unfortunately we expect another, possibly even more serious, Sneak Attack in the House/Senate Conference Committee over the next week as Congress members put the final wording together for the 2006 Congressional Agriculture Appropriations Bill (for a list of committee members and contact info, click here). Therefore OCA is now calling on consumers and the organic community to apply pressure to their House of Representatives members as well as their Senators to stop the Conference Committee from degrading the standards. In addition we urge everyone to start applying pressure to the Organic Trade Association, who are unfortunately spearheading this Sneak Attack. We ask everyone who has read our SOS Action Alert and signed our petition to Congress to call your House of Representative member 202-224-3121, as well as the OTA: 413-774-7511.

(If you are an organic business, please sign on to the petition to stop the OTA rider here)

Background of the Sneak Attack
After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations, such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and members of the Organic Trade Association, are moving to lower organic standards by allowing Bush appointees in the USDA National Organic Program to approve a broad list of synthetic ingredients and processing aids that would be allowed in organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will have near total control over what can go into organic foods and products. (Send a quick letter to your Congresspersons online here)

During the next week, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Congress is being lobbied by industry to vote on a rider in the House/Senate Conference Committee to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that could take away control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be OK?).

For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of Congress not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act: OFPA), but rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards Board resolve our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most members of Congress seem to be listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our voices. (Send a quick letter to your Congresspersons online here)

In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the "fix is already in." So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your Congressional Representatives and Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic integrity.

Call the Capital Switchboard here: 202-224-3121, and tell your Congresspersons not to support any ammendments to the ag appropriations bill that would lower organic standards. You can send a quick letter to your Congresspersons online here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd-ofpa.htm


WHAT'S AT STAKE
Organic Standards Under Fire:

Agribusiness front groups, such as the Farm Bureau, big food corporations like Kraft, biotech companies such as Monsanto, right-wing think tanks, such as the Hudson Institute, and industry-friendly government agencies have consistently tried to undermine organic standards and get the USDA to allow conventional chemical-intensive and factory farm practices on organic farms. Unless strict organic standards are maintained, consumers will lose faith in the organic label.

Federal Funding for Organics:

The current five year $220 billion US Farm Bill allocates less than $5 million annually for organic research, promotion and marketing...approximately one-hundredth of one percent. This means that Congress is using billions of our tax dollars to reward chemical-intensive, factory farm style operations, while penalizing non-chemical farmers. This, despite the fact that organic food has been the fasting growing segment in the food marketplace for over 13 years. To move beyond using pesticides, chemicals and genetically modified seeds, conventional farmers need government subsidies and conversion programs that prioritize local and regional organic production. These misguided priorities must be reversed in the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill.

Preserving Organic Farms
and Consumer Choice:

Genetically Engineered (GE) crops pose a serious pollution threat to organic food and farms. Windblown pollen from GE crops and commingling of seeds in grain elevators or transport vehicles are contaminating organic farms and seed stocks of corn, soy, cotton and canola. The OCA is calling for strict legal liability on all GE crops utilizing the "polluter pays" principle, to protect the property rights of farmers growing organic or non-GE crops. The OCA is also calling for mandatory labeling on GE foods- similar to laws already in place in Europe and other countries- so that consumers have a choice whether or not to buy GE foods.


The Organic Consumers Association's Stance on the Arthur Harvey Lawsuit and 2007 Farm Bill

Arthur Harvey versus USDA Lawsuit

OCA and the other the plaintiffs in the Harvey lawsuit basically agree that:

Synthetics may be allowed in the “Made With” Organic ingredients category if there is no non-synthetic ingredient currently available, and if the synthetic ingredient is rigorously reviewed by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). Of course none of these synthetics can be derived from “excluded methods” such as genetic engineering or irradiation, as National Organic Program (NOP) regulations stipulate.

OCA is willing to consider the limited allowance of some synthetic substances for use in or on the non-organic portions of products labeled as “Organic” (those in the 95-100% Organic category). This will require a new rulemaking process by the USDA that improves and appropriately supports a thorough, carefully managed National Organic Standards Board process used to review and approve all synthetic substances proposed for use in organic food processing.

The synthetics originally approved by the NOSB were all supposed to be “sunsetted” after five years, and then re-reviewed. This never happened. OCA strongly believes that it is not a good idea to reopen the entire Organic Food Production Act (OFPA) for Congressional revisions at this time, but rather to use the USDA rulemaking process, whereby the organic community and the NOSB will propose rule changes to the USDA that are published in the Federal Register and then subjected to a full comment period of 90-180 days.

Additionally the OCA is committed to working with all interests to find clear, consensus language that will allow dairy farmers to continue conversion to organic production without suffering undue financial burdens, and which acknowledges the simultaneous conversion of land and dairy animals. Again, through the USDA rulemaking process, rather than Congressional action, OCA would support compromise measures that would allow dairy farmers to use 20% of non-organic feed for the first nine months of conversion for organic cows, as long as this less-expensive feed was coming from farms in a certified transition to organic program.

The OCA also strongly supports moving taxpayer subsidies away from non-green, pork-barrel, trade-distorting commodity and export programs to instead support farmers and ranchers making the transition to organic. If dairy farmers could get a temporary subsidy to cover part or most of the additional costs of purchasing organic feed during the transition period for their cows, strong organic standards could be maintained without undue economic hardship for these farmers.

Currently there is a 15% greater demand for organic milk than there is supply across the U.S. And while organic beef and meat supplies grew by 122% last year, there is a massive shortage of supply, especially for supermarkets who want to sell organic meat products. Meanwhile family farm dairies and beef, poultry, and pork producers are going out of business every day because they can’t afford the costs of converting over to organic. If we can help dairy, beef, pork, and poultry farmers in the U.S. make the conversion to organic, as well as help currently certified organic farmers increase their herd or flock sizes a bit, then these farmers won’t need subsidies on an ongoing basis.

On the 2007 Farm Bill:

OCA believes that conservation programs, food stamp allocations, WIC program allocations, and other community nutrition programs (which constitute over 1/2 of the Farm Bill) must not be cut, but rather increased, with funds coming from trade-distorting “pork barrel” subsidy programs such as cotton subsidies, which have recently been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.

The most important segment of America’s farmers (64%) in terms of nutrition and land stewardship (organic and transition to organic farmers and fruit and vegetable growers) get no subsidies at all, or very little, while huge chemical-intensive corporate farms (10% of America’s farms) get the lion’s share (80%) of the nation’s $20 billion in crop subsidies every year. Giant exporters, who also receive enormous additional subsidies, then “dump” these subsidized crops on the Global South at below the cost of production, exacerbating poverty and driving millions of small and indigenous farmers off the land.

We need to simultaneously stop “dumping” taxpayer subsidized crops on the developing world at prices below the cost of production, help U.S. family farmers, improve public health, and protect the environment, by starting to phase-out all “non-green” U.S. farm subsidies in favor of subsidies that help farmers farm more sustainably; make the transition to organic; develop local value-added markets for their products; and adopt renewable and sustainable energy practices on the farm. The worsening energy crisis underlines the need to move as soon as possible to reduce petroleum and energy inputs, and to increase renewable and energy conservation measures on the U.S.’s 1.8 million farms.

OCA will continue to work with other public interest organizations, conservation and environmental groups, and ant-hunger, nutrition, and human rights organizations to eliminate trade-distorting, pork barrel provisions in the Farm Bill and annual USDA appropriations and instead to work for a Sustainable & Fair Deal Farm Bill which benefits U.S. family farmers, consumers, low-income families and children, and farmers and rural villagers around the world.


 

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