MUCH of the non-point pollution of ground and surface waters of the American continent comes from agricultural run-off containing toxic pesticide residues and soluble fertilizers. This pollution is a result of chemical-intensive agricultural practices developed and utilized during the last fifty years. Chemical technology has an overwhelming impact on the Great Lakes bio-region because of the massive exposure of these irreplaceable and unforgiving fresh water resources to thousands of miles of direct shoreline and hundreds of river watersheds that drain directly into the Great Lakes. The State of Michigan, for example, has predominant hydrology and geology (permeable soils and shallow bedrock), which accelerate percolation into the Great Lakes. In addition to direct run-off, both polluted communicating groundwater aquifers and pesticide volatilization contribute to the problem. The pesticides accumulate into air masses, which then circulate over and precipitate into huge masses of lake water.
Virtually all of the exposure could be eliminated if sounder agricultural practices were being utilized or even encouraged on farm land in the United States and Canada. Instead, the U.S. public accepts the general view that pesticide use is a necessary risk (despite that the majority of the present use is only to achieve cosmetic standards) and that pesticides are economic poisons that must be tolerated if enough food or fiber is to be produced for a growing population.
This assumption was codified in a pesticide statute, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Moreover, pesticides have been exempted from almost every other environmental protection statute. This thinking has so penetrated the protocol of bureaucratic proceedings and land grant university organization that it has ascended unquestioned to the status of a natural law.
However, a significant number of farming practitioners in the world recognize that chemical farming is not the only way to produce wholesome and abundant crops. These farmers have developed a patchwork of alternative production systems in spite of (and in many cases because of) the current chemically dependent paradigm.
The hallmarks of these systems are: crop rotation and diversification; cooperation with ecological systems and cycles; focus on net return rather than gross income and yields; and minimization of external inputs, particularly non-renewable resources.
Because prices of basic agricultural commodities have been set in an environment of over-production and surplus supplies, most farmers operate under severe economic pressure to eke out a net income. The cheap food policy of the federal government has virtually guaranteed the availability of these free agricultural commodities but has not made food cheap at the supermarket or at the fast food outlet. The only beneficiaries of the cheap food system are the food processors and the commodity brokers, most of which are multi-national megacorporations that push free trade agreements to further undermine the economy at the farm level and control farm program legislation. On the other hand, those hurt by the system not only include farmers, because of the over-production, but also the environment, which is required to harbor all the chemicals utilized to force growth out of dead soil, and food buyers who usually have no idea how their food is grown, packaged, processed and marketed.
Huge corporations continually use the projected world population growth as a justification for their monopolistic practices and their collaboration with farm chemical manufacturers. They do so despite the obvious fact that food production should be localized worldwide and is not the limiting factor in population growth. Poor energy policies in the United States impel agriculture to be the export barterer for cheap energy.
Responding to the present economic and ecologic quagmire, alternative farmers have found a market for alternatively produced goods at higher than conventional prices. This has led to a privately funded array of marketing, certifying, distributing and cooperating organizations, producer pools and direct-marketing farmers. The result has been good for the environment (and the Great Lakes) and has provided incentive for conventional farmers to convert to alternative systems to get higher prices while suffering less water contamination of the farmstead and surrounding areas.
Unfortunately, much of the alternative community has been beset by a lack of meaningful and uniform standards, a rash of opportunism bordering on fraud in some cases and little to no support from land grant universities. Responding to this dilemma, Congress in 1990 passed the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA), an elegant and novel piece of legislation. The OFPA promised to protect consumers and to encourage more ecologically sound agricultural practices that could begin to reverse the agricultural impact on the Great Lakes and all other precious water reserves in the nation.
Sadly, almost five years later, regulations under the OFPA have yet to be promulgated, and now an even larger sea of counterfeit and pseudo-organic products exists in the marketplace. Consumers continue to be unsure what certified organic means, and many natural/health food retailers continue to use whatever hype they can think up to sell non-organic food as organic. In addition, true organic farmers who have eliminated any use of synthetic and non-organically derived materials in their production systems must compete with those whose state standards or certification agencies still allow use of questionable materials and inputs, such as so-called natural pesticides, usually highly adulterated with inert solvents and carriers. Even worse, the organic livestock producers have not been, and still are not, allowed to even put the word organic on their U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected meat labels until the law is fully promulgated.
This article attempts to chronicle, analyze and scrutinize the OFPA and to search (or at least spawn a search) for other legal remedies to prevent the demise of legitimate organic agriculture at the hands of fraudulent and deceptive trade practices. Until high quality organic food production and processing standards are in place and given credence by federal and state agricultural agencies and educational institutions, chemical-based agriculture will predominate across the midwest an area that is largely dependent on agriculture and which, in turn, sends much of its contaminated water to the Great Lakes basin. As fragile as any ecosystem, this remarkable labyrinth of freshwater seas cannot be expected to serve as a forgiving toxins reservoir forever.
The OFPA is a complex yet elegant statute. In many instances, the law is open to multiple interpretations. However, congressional conference reports help to clarify legislative intent and will be referenced throughout this article.
The OFPA was framed and drafted as American agriculture was recovering from the alar fiasco, which resulted in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) successfully causing alar to be removed from the market in 1989. Alternative products were in great demand, especially apples grown without alar and other chemicals. Farmers, many of whom had never considered the issue surrounding organic standards or decisions to farm with less inputs, suddenly saw opportunities to exploit a grown without marketplace preference.
Unfortunately, there were many stakeholders in this market, all benefitting without uniform standards in a jungle of conflicting markets replete with fraudulent, deceptive and misleading claims. Indeed, organic was on a fast track to the black market and underground trafficking. No doubt, there were some true organic producers, adhering to their own stringent set of original organic principles. However, because of the looseness of marketplace standards, the truly organic producers were very often lost in the shuffle or not really believed.
The problem was attributable, in part, to the rapidly emerging community of sustainable agriculture. The term was originally a euphemism for organic because one of the characteristics of pure organic agriculture is that the practice is sustainable. Unfortunately, the movement of sustainable agriculture was almost immediately obfuscated by interests that interpreted Low- Input Sustainable Agriculture (LISA) to mean Less -Input Sustainable Agriculture, which then was translated to mean less use or no over-use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. In other words, a slight deviation from conventional agriculture yields sustainable agriculture.
Organic growing was quickly being overwhelmed by funding of sustainable farming ventures under the LISA and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) funding initiatives, which left organic in the wings. The problem with sustainable agriculture under its emerging form was that progress was not measurable except when zero-use acres were involved. By contrast, acres in zero-use pesticide may qualify as organic land, and this process was measurable.
Amidst these developments, the public was being confused, indeed misled, by several slippery terms: pesticide-free, ecologically grown, biodynamic, natural and sustainable. A Senate report on the act makes clear that none of these terms are synonymous with or equivalent to organic because of inadequate standards or vagueness.
Clearly, the OFPA, though precise and well-crafted, suffers from egregious debilitating exceptions. The exceptions were ill-advisedly added through lobbying by vested interests such as chemical input vendors, federal fund recipients (through LISA, SARE, etc.) and the organic industry, a coalition of distributors and processors that sees organic as its playing field, to the exclusion of growers.
The bill was worded primarily by the staff of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, particularly Kathleen Merrigan, who, despite no experience in organic farming, produced an outstanding and novel piece of legislation. The great novelty of the statute is its heavy dependence on an advisory board, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB or the board ), to promulgate regulations under the act. However, this dependence also represents the statute's greatest weakness and renders it vulnerable to unwise or contrary appointments to the board. Another unique feature of the statute is its exceptional dependence on public input that is actually sought, not just tolerated, by the NOSB and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Production Program (NOPP).
In enacting the statute, legislators expected that the NOSB would shift from a (FIFRA-based) conventional agriculture paradigm and promulgate rules under the act using an unnecessary-risk, minimal-input, high standard. Further, legislators expected the NOSB would accomplish this task by seeking out practitioners who did not use questionable inputs instead of codifying past lists of permitted inputs from every known certifier in the world. The NOSB was to accommodate the interests of growers by codifying improper and prohibited practices to level the playing field; it was not to lower growing standards. In fact, in certain areas, the NOSB was mandated to add standards, particularly for organic livestock production, where Congress lacked knowledge and expertise.
The most unique characteristic of the OFPA is that it is rooted in logic, rationality and internal consistency. It may represent the most commendable attempt yet to make statutory law match or at least imitate natural law.
C. Congress Intended that Promulgation of Rules Under the OFPA be Prompt
Congress mandated the promulgation of rules under the OFPA, leaving no doubt or leeway in the timing or the comprehensiveness of the regulations. Indeed, as Congress must have recognized, any delay or compromise in standards would certainly injure competent veteran organic producers and consumers. Nevertheless, government agencies have not promulgated a respectable rule even five years after the law's passage. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has left a dismal record of OFPA rule promulgation. This track record of failure is outlined in the following text.
First, the Bush administration was openly hostile to the concept of organic agriculture and delayed appointment of the NOSB until January 1992. The final roster for the board was woefully lacking in organic experience and expertise. Only two tenured organic farm operators were actually appointed. Conventional agriculture educators were appointed (Dr. Gary Osweiler and Dr. Don Kinsman), but they lacked exposure to organic practices and paradigm. They have spent most of their time trying to understand what the board wanted organic to mean and be. Most remaining board members were primarily political appointments with conflicts of interest in, or actual hostility toward, the promulgation of meaningful organic standards. Astoundingly, at the first NOSB meeting in March 1992, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Joann Smith admonished the board to make sure it did not characterize organic food as safer than regular food, since there is no scientific proof to that effect. She added that there should be no attempt to make conventional food look bad. In fact, she said the OFPA should not even be considered a food safety law.
The leaders of the first introductory meeting never made any serious effort to define organic farming or even walk through the law provision by provision. They did not discuss paradigm shifts and philosophy fundamental to organic production, nor the over-arching tenet that keeps organic farming special its commitment to taking no unnecessary risks with the natural environment.
The NOPP staff at the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) consisted of mainstream bureaucrats schooled primarily in agricultural economics with no experience in organic production and no demonstrable comprehension of free market supply-demand economics. Most staff members seemed focused on irrelevant pricing puzzles and persisted in basing organic commodity prices on surplus-based conventional prices. They referred to organic farming as an industry, and their networking was usually based on these special interests. Direct marketing farming was a foreign concept to these individuals.
There seemed to be a constant and deliberate effort to delay promulgation. Bureaucratic inertia set in almost immediately and became overwhelming when the board prepared some final recommendations in June 1994. As of March 1995, still no rule had appeared in the Federal Register with respect to the standards the board earlier recommended.
The NOPP staff, NOSB chairman Michael Sligh and the majority of NOSB members failed to attempt to define terms and truly study the OFPA statute. Perpetual procrastination on how to address the National List process or content continues to stall progress even today. The total exclusion of both the food safety debate and input from the chemically sensitive community (those who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity and require clean organic food) has been a severe drawback as well.
Regarding implementation of the rules, phase-in recommendations kept floating to the surface, as did the possible need to grandfather in previously used questionable materials. Companies that were looking to new organic rules as their jumping in opportunity doggedly attended every board meeting, hoping the standards and allowed materials would give them the chance to use synthetic substances in processed foods and still label them organic. In fact, historical uses in organic processed foods of some of the synthetics desired by many processors were non-existent. Yet, these companies hoped the synthetics they used would be categorically allowed if the lead processor/scientist on the board, Dr. Richard Theuer of Beechnut Foods, could prove their necessity.
Even though public input was solicited on a regular basis and all meetings were open and announced well in advance, typical organic food consumers rarely read about the board, its meetings or its interest in their input. The public that most of the board wanted to hear from were the organic insiders, the friends of certifiers, the pals of processors, the so-called movers and shakers from the well-known organic clique. Notices for meetings were placed in insider organic journals, certification newsletters and on alternative agricultural bulletin boards, etc. Notices were rarely placed in mainstream newspapers, food co-op mailings, environmental group newsletters or food safety/pesticide advocacy notices.
III. Unnecessary and Avoidable Risks of Food Production Practices
The OFPA and its underlying legislative intent displayed in conference reports outline a clear mandate for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the NOSB to unmistakenly differentiate organically produced goods from conventionally produced goods. The clear intent is to separate the organic paradigm from the mentality underlying the FIFRA, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Environmental Protection Act. The statute seeks to recognize that whereas conventional matters seek to balance risks and benefits, the organic approach seeks to avoid risks by using alternative practices and materials that have virtually no toxicity risks.
Congress clearly expected the NOSB to seek the advice of practitioners who were successfully growing crops without toxic pest control or chemical fertilizer inputs and to base standards on these growers' methods. Instead, the NOSB ignored and spurned the testimony of these pure organic growers and the strong protests of its own minority members who implored the board not to seek a lowest common denominator standard that compromises the integrity of organic growers and their organically grown products. Instead of leveling the playing field, lowering standards simply shifts the non-uniform standards to another venue without settling the fundamental questions of risk avoidance, minimal inputs, deceptive labeling, full disclosure, pesticide residue background levels and clean farming techniques. Indeed, the NOPP staff and several members of the board have argued vigorously for full tool boxes of toxins and rescue treatments with scarcely a concession to requirements to divert products produced with these materials to the conventional market.
The clear and ever-present purpose of the OFPA is to remove the confusion among consumers as to the nature of organically produced foods. Organically grown goods are clearly intended to be grown without, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is to assure that the consumer gets products that are authentically grown without, or if not grown without, then clearly labeled as such on the container label. To date, the statute has not been given its intended effect.
The NOSB and U.S. Department of Agriculture staff for the NOPP have attempted, despite minority resistance, to put forth an unreviewed National List of permitted synthetics in clear violation of the OFPA's requirement to put these materials through the required process for exemption. All materials must meet all three criteria in section 6517(c)(1) and all seven in section 6518(m), and they must have specified uses or applications for all exemptions, not just blankets as permitted materials for any purpose. Any organic grower now using a synthetic material or a botanical pesticide must realize these practices are very likely not consistent with the law and/or organic practices since this law depends heavily on the clearly stated and recurring (repeated no less than seven times) consistency concept.
The OFPA must be taken and interpreted in its entirety, and rules must be promulgated with internal consistency. Nothing can be interpreted out of context as the NOSB Processing, Handling and Labeling (PHL) Committee is attempting to do with subsections 6517(c)(1)(A)(ii) and 6517(c)(1)(B)(iii).
That there is a debate over allowing the use of non-organic ingredients in organic products is quite puzzling. It seems clear that the law does not allow, either in its spirit or letter, for any such adulteration. For example, section 6510(a)(1) prohibits a certified processor (handler) from adding synthetics. Section 6510(a)(4) prohibits the same handler from using non-organically produced ingredients, notwithstanding the apparent exception-creating references vis- -vis a National List of allowed non-organic ingredients.
This exception evaporates if one reads section 6517 in its entirety. That is, section 6517(c)(1) is satisfied only if all of (A), (B) and (C) are fulfilled for an ingredient. If non-organic ingredients were to be used, (A)(iii) would never be fulfilled, and (A)(i) would not be fulfilled for the immune-suppressed and chemically sensitive individuals on all- organic diets under physician direction. Section (A)(ii) would never be satisfied for non-organically produced ingredients because an organically produced alternative product is virtually always available.
Furthermore, the term available in (A)(ii) was not meant to be read as commercially available, but as solely available. Serious organic processors would always find, contract or actually produce an organic substitute. It seems that availability in this section was meant only to deal with the tough issues like agar-agar or ammonium carbonate, not, for example, organic cayenne pepper. Further, (A)(iii) could prohibit naturals that are inconsistent with organic farming and handling. Non-organically grown products would certainly appear to be inconsistent with organic production.
B. Phase-out, Phase-in
The idea of phase-outs and phase-ins is clearly to precede promulgation and cannot legally extend beyond a delayed promulgation date. The National List must be short and contain use and application identification. Consistency mandates that data gaps be exemption disqualifying.
The mandate to consider the criteria is binding. Any material that fails to pass all seven criteria without negative characteristics is a doubtful material to be on a list where the credibility of organic production hangs in the balance. Arguments about these criteria and suggestions that they be ranked for importance have been made. Again, consistency and its corollary of logic facilitate proper interpretation.
If an alternative practice to using a synthetic or natural poison exists, the other criteria are moot, and the material does not qualify for organic use no ranking is necessary. If the criteria requiring compatibility are not met, the material again violates the basic consistency standard of the act, and the material is disqualified. Obviously, the remaining criteria only come into consideration if the no-alternative and no-incompatibility criteria are met. Then, and only then, are rankings on health and the environment even relevant considerations. Following this interpretation, very few materials would get through this filter of risk avoidance and become a necessary risk. Indeed, why should there be an extensive list if thousands of farmers have learned and demonstrated that crops and livestock can be grown and raised without these inputs? Those who think this cannot be done should learn from those who are doing it. They certainly should not be interrupting those who are engaged in organic production by delaying implementation of the act while a lengthy list of inputs is put through a time-consuming and unnecessary process of material approval.
The burden of questionable inputs should be borne by those who would use them, while the program is up and running. For those growers who are not dependent on outside-the-organic-farm materials, the National List petition process can be put into operation with other growers characterizing and justifying their use of certain materials on their own toll.
D. Food Safety and Human Health Effects of Major Importance
The OFPA makes clear in section 6517(c)(1)(A)(i) for synthetics and section 6517(c)(2)(A)(i) for naturals that no material harmful to human health shall be permitted in organic food production and processing. The drafters were so adamant on this point that the law requires the NOSB to conduct a full-scale review of botanical pesticides. For a botanical pesticide to escape prohibition, the material must: (1) be free of negative human health effects; (2) be consistent with organic farming or handling and the purposes of the statute; and (3) pass scrutiny under all seven evaluative criteria under section 6518(m).
Had the drafters been aware of the seriousness of the mammalian toxicity, the mode of action and the reactivity of the multiple chemical sensitivity population for these materials, they would not have passed this burden to the NOSB. Instead, they would have prohibited botanical pesticides outright just as they did sulfites, nitrates, nitrites and arsenic and lead salts.
This author was asked to be a technical advisor on two botanicals: tobacco dust and quassia. My review for tobacco dust uncovered literature demonstrating violations of all seven criteria in section 6518(m). Yet, the NOSB, in the face of this evidence, failed to place this material on the list of prohibited materials at its October 1994 meeting. Quassia was prohibited only because it had no EPA registration although it also failed the seven criteria of section 6518(m). Despite its failure to meet the criteria, however, only section 6517(d)(3) prevented this toxic material's widespread use in organic production and/or handling.
If the consistency paradigm of the OFPA is to be uniformly administered, then section 6517(d)(3) presents strong evidence that any doubt or data gaps for a given material should mandate exclusion from permitted uses of that material. In other words, a rule of common sense and prudence should prevail in organic standards: If in doubt, throw it out.
The OFPA defines a decisive vote for the NOSB to be two-thirds of the votes cast at a meeting. Assuming that an abstention is not a cast vote, this would be two-thirds of the non-abstaining members present. This detail becomes very significant, yet problematic, in voting on materials prohibition of permission for the National List. The reason stems from the fact that failure to prohibit a natural is to permit a natural; as failure to permit a synthetic is to prohibit a synthetic. If a vote to permit a synthetic material does not result in two-thirds of the cast votes to permit, the material is automatically prohibited. Any number of votes greater than one-third of the voting board against permittance prohibits a synthetic material. This is consistent with the statute that prohibits synthetics automatically unless an exception is made. That is, the burden of proof of permissibility lies with a synthetic material, the case for which must overcome its presumed harmfulness by a neutral presentation from technical reviewers. These reviews should objectively convince a majority of the board to deviate from the basic tenet of the OFPA: that synthetics are generally harmful or at least undesirable in organic production and processing.
However, the situation for natural materials is not as clear. In general, naturals are presumed harmless by the Act. Therefore, to prohibit a natural requires two-thirds of the voting board to prohibit. This requirement prevents a minority of the board from negating the presumed harmlessness of a natural material (granite dust, sand, etc.). This is again consistent with the basic OFPA synthetic versus natural tenet.
It is not possible to apply this rule by poll for the natural (so- called botanical ) pesticides because the burden of proof is shifted to assumed harmfulness even if these active insecticidal materials are 100% natural. Therefore, the statute requires a two-thirds vote or greater to permit or a greater than one-third vote to prohibit a botanical pesticide, even if the pesticide formulation does not contain toxic synthetic inert ingredients (although most of them do contain toxic inerts).
To be on the National List, a synthetic material must not be harmful to human health, have no wholly natural substitute and be consistent with organic farming and handling. The material must also fit within a short list of seven use and application categories. Additionally, the material must not contain any EPA inert classified ingredients of toxicological concern. This requirement only applies for production. Handling and processing of the material cannot involve synthetics. Finally, the material in question must also survive the scrutiny of the seven criteria under section 6518(m).
A great deal of confusion surrounds handling and processing within the OFPA. Careful and repeated efforts to resolve this confusion resulted in the following determinations and interpretations:
The OFPA also lists clear requirements for packaging, containers and water quality.
It is apparent that a component of the National List could include a compilation of non-organically grown minor ingredients that are extremely difficult or impossible to obtain as organically grown, but not synthetic ingredients.
A Senate report on the act makes clear that this list was not intended simply to contain scarce or expensive organically grown foods, but that certain items were virtually not available. They must also be necessary in the sense that alternative recipes or ingredients were not possible. This would appear to be an extremely rare circumstance indeed. Only one imported spice that can probably be grown in the United States comes to mind. The idea that yeast qualifies is debunked in the next section on livestock.
A. Labeling Processed Food: Deception Prohibited
Processed food labeled organic on the front of the package (which must contain at least 95% organically grown ingredients) may not contain any added synthetic materials. No exceptions to this rule are evident in the OFPA. However, synthetic ingredients are allowed for non-certified processed foods which contain organic ingredients (made partially from organic ingredients, often less than 95%).
Restrictions on this made-with-organically-grown-ingredients food are limited only by the way in which the descriptive word organic is used on the principal display panel (PDP) and/or the ingredient panel of the packaged product. Products below 50% organic content may not use the word organic on the principal display panel at all. In all cases, the percentage organic may be displayed on the ingredient information panel found elsewhere on the package.
1. Livestock Standards: Rising Out of the Wallow
It has been clear from the outset in 1990 that livestock destined for slaughter as organically grown or cultured for livestock products must receive 100% organically grown feedstock, including pasture, forage, grain or anything that the animal or other non-plant life ingests or absorbs as a nutrient outside of salt and water.
To maintain clean livestock production, an operation must find (or grow) 100% organically grown feed, clean water and salt from a pristine deposit. The Livestock Committee of the NOSB has fastidiously done a proper job of recommending compliance with the law in this regard, requiring 100% organic feed and statutory incubation times for 100% organic feeding of breeding stock in the production of slaughter stock progeny. The Livestock Committee properly prohibited synthetic antibiotics, parasiticides, hormones and growth promotants, based in large part on the testimony from mandated livestock hearings at four sites across the country, all administered by the same administrative law judge. Public input at these livestock hearings demonstrated that these materials were unnecessary to organic livestock production and that consumers demanded their elimination. Most producers found that diverting therapeutically treated animals to the conventional market was not only feasible, but was also a practice in which they were already engaged.
The law grants additional authority to the NOSB to create stronger livestock standards than the drafters had specified. However, board recommendations for animal products (except meat) were not consistent with the statute. The full NOSB overruled the NOSB Livestock Committee, allowing the treatment of dairy animals with antibiotics and parasiticides up to three months prior to organic milk production. The Livestock Committee, reading and interpreting section 6509(e)(2), had set the period at twelve months. The three- month period is clearly contrary to the law and must be changed by the NOPP in its final rules.
Confusion reigns in the poultry house as well, but it seems clear that all but day-old chicks and prior-to-purchase breeder stock must be 100% organically fed. Thus, all certified organic livestock must be 100% organically fed at all times after entering the certified farming operation. Any synthetic, therapeutically treated animal (or non-plant life) must be identified and diverted to the conventional market, or the animal must wait three years before again being eligible as certified organic breeding stock or slaughter stock.
During that three-year waiting period, such animals must be continually organically fed. Any attempt to feed on-farm breeder stock non-organically grown feed during the first two-thirds of gestation is strictly against the OFPA. The exception for purchased/replacement breeder stock was intended only to allow relief from the organic feed requirement (prior to purchase) for newly purchased animals. These replacement animals do not qualify as organic slaughter stock, milking stock or egg-laying stock until after three years of organic management. Any other interpretation is deceptive to the consumer of organic animal products and inconsistent with the act.
2. Bees
To be consistent with other livestock standards, bees must be provided with a certified organic farm area with sufficient isolation where bee forage crops are grown so that these organisms remain continuously organically fed. Prohibited materials must not be used, and an incubation period of at least one generation must pass after bees are brought in from non-organic environments before honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, beeswax or queen production can be designated as organically produced.
3. Fermentation Products: More Non-Plant Life
Wine, beer, vinegar and soy sauce must be produced using 100% certified organic feedstocks to qualify as organic under the OFPA. Apparently, these products cannot escape the standards of organic production as natural simply because they are made by a naturally occurring process.
The previously mentioned products are produced by a fermenting organism, usually yeast, and such organisms receive the same scrutiny under the OFPA as any livestock. Yeasts can be organically fed simply by requiring organically produced feedstock just as in wine and alcohol manufacturing.
Any exceptions for the National List clearly would come only for synthetics required to augment these fermentations, such as sodium carbonate, potassium chloride and ion exchange resins. It is a serious mistake to pretend that yeast or any cultured product cannot be produced without using non-organically grown feedstocks.
The same reasoning must be examined for ascorbic and citric acid production. These processes produce livestock products as in the case of citric acid, or livestock as in the case of yeast. These processes, in their simplest terms, take a plant product and convert it into a livestock product as surely as producing honey, milk, eggs or mushrooms. The same principles of requiring 100% organic feed must apply.
Interestingly, such an approach eliminates most of the controversial (and illegal) National List for synthetic processing ingredients except for a few synthetic inorganic chemicals, which it seems doubtful were ever meant to be excluded from organic food by the drafters provided these materials were of food-grade quality.
4. Aquaculture
All forms of aquaculture parallel the livestock production section with respect to the organic standards illustrated in the above paragraphs. Organically fed breeding stock must be cultured using 100% organic feed in a controlled area that has definable boundaries and a three-year no-prohibited-material use history. Progeny that have been in the existing system for three years or more are disqualified as slaughter stock after the three-year term but can be sold in the conventional market. If this is too difficult, the system must be rid of the species to be cultured, and new frey or eggs must be introduced into a three-year-tolled enclosure. Pesticide and synthetic contamination (higher than background) must be excluded from the impoundments.
Selection of the impoundment or construction of the facility is just as crucial as the selection of the field for field crops, but the key is 100% organically produced feed.
V. Certification, Accreditation and the National List
The cumbersomeness, complexity, cost and timetables for implementation of the OFPA are all alleviated by a shortened National List of permitted toxic materials. The elegance and honesty of the organic program are inversely proportional to the length of the lists of permitted ( otherwise prohibited ) materials. The OFPA should be implemented with a clean-plate National List so that organic-growth practitioners who qualify without complications can begin production. Any further delays are unfair to both producers and consumers, and lawsuits will inevitably and properly emanate therefrom. The history of the organic movement is littered with stories of successful conversions to organic production, fostered by deprivations (loss of access, unjustifiable cost or unavailability) of disqualifying inputs.
Costs of certification and accreditation are markedly lowered by simplification engendered by high standards and short lists. Any standards based on lowest-common-denominator theories or other artificial means of inclusiveness will doom both the individual producer's ability to sell to sophisticated organic consumers and the overall organic movement itself.
Long-term growth of organic farming can only be achieved by codifying high standards and eliminating inappropriate practices and products, not by lowering standards and squeezing questionable inputs onto the National List, as the current NOSB seems determined to do.
Jim Marsden, vice-president of scientific affairs at the American Meat Institute, was quoted recently saying, So many of our problems today come from USDA's failure to follow a regulatory or scientific process. One would hope this same failure does not spill over into the OFPA regulation. Carol Tucker Foreman, former assistant secretary of agriculture for food and consumer services, has lamented, The only thing I don't understand is why [the USDA] says, `For our industry, the lowest common denominator will rule.' Why not say, `In our industry, the standard will be set by the best guy.'
Accreditation is a nightmare, and harmonization of international standards is an impossibility unless organic standards are set high. With long lists, multiple exceptions and split operations of producers and processors (doing both organic and conventional growing and/or handling), certification will not be affordable.
In order to prudently protect the Great Lakes from continual agricultural non-point source pollution, a radical revision in farming practices in the Great Lakes basin is necessary. This can be accomplished only if there is a strict codification of organic farming practices under the Organic Food Production Act. Regulations promulgated under this act must not violate the careful drafting of the act itself and the intent of its originators to eliminate the deliberate use of toxic synthetics and naturals in farming practices called organic. A clear, concise differentiation of organically produced food, feed and fiber from non-organically produced goods is absolutely essential.
Integrated pest management and sustainable agriculture systems, as popular as they are these days (at least as catch phrases), will not accomplish this end because toxic materials use is not genuinely abated by these token systems.
It is insane to continue using toxic pesticides in agriculture when alternative practices, relying on the time-tested balances of nature and the use of simple equipment, work just as well and often better. There is no time like the present to convert to organic farming for the production of this nation's food. There is no place like the Great Lakes states to foster this conversion especially when a major international fresh-water resource hangs in the balance.