FOOD BYTES, News & Analysis on Genetic Engineering & Factory Farming Issue #7 (February 15, 1998), by: Ronnie Cummins, Pure Food Campaign USA

Over the past 60 days the U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposed rules to degrade organic food standards and outlaw eco-labels have come under increasing attack from consumers, farmers, producers, and natural food retailers. According to Washington sources, USDA bureaucrats have been "surprised and shocked" by the nationwide and now global backlash. In a strategic move to try to contain the crisis the USDA announced on Feb. 10, the resignation of Michael Hankin, Acting Program Manager of the National Organic Program, and his replacement by Keith Jones, an official considered more sympathetic to natural food industry interests. In a nationally syndicated story several days earlier, the Associated Press reported on the flood of protest letters received by the USDA, and highlighted a statement by George Siemon, leader of the nation's largest organic farmers co-op, Organic Valley, based in LaFarge, Wisconsin:

"We as organic farmers and our customers will not sit idly back and have (the rules) force-fed to us by corporate agribusiness lobbyists and bureaucrats in Washington. The farmers of our co-op will not lower our standards."

On Feb. 12, the USDA held the first of four so-called public hearings on the proposed rules in Austin, Texas. Held in an obscure location with very little advance publicity, the hearing nonetheless drew 150 pro-organic protestors, including members of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, who rallied outside the building and then moved into the meeting room to offer criticisms one-by-one to a panel of rather reticent USDA officials, accompanied by members of the National Organic Standards Board. Apparently the biotech and agribusiness corporations are so confident that the USDA's final rules, expected to be issued later this year, will reflect their interests, that they didn't even bother to send a single representative to the meeting.

Following the meeting Eileen Stommes, Deputy Administrator of the USDA, the official in charge of receiving public comments on the issue, confirmed the Clinton administration's "smokescreen strategy" for implementing their final rules on organic standards. This strategy basically involves utilizing three of the most controversial issues (genetic engineering, sewage sludge, and food irradiation) - which the USDA will temporarily postpone putting into the first set of final rules - as a lightening rod and diversion to distract and divide the opposition. This "big three" diversion is intended to coopt grassroots anger, create the false impression the USDA is willing to compromise, allow opportunist activist organizations to "claim victory," and to lull the natural food industry and consumers into swallowing the scores of "poison pills" embedded in the rest of the proposed rules. As the Austin, Texas meeting ended, Stommes was overheard telling a rather incredulous member of the NOSB that "If we just postpone or get rid of these three big issues, everything else will be O.K., right?"

International criticism of the USDA has also begun to develop. In a Jan. 5 press release, Linda Bullard, Vice-President of IFOAM, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, representing 570 member organizations in more than 100 countries, denounced the U.S. government's rules. The rules, according to Bullard, "if allowed to stand will drive a wedge through the heart of the U.S. organic movement and effectively destroy the hard-won consumer confidence in organics... In criminalizing the use of private organic seals based on adherence to higher organic standards than its own, the USDA has lost sight of its proper role. It is indeed ironic that the United States, the home of free enterprise, is the only country in the world which proposes to restrict the enterprise of private certification bodies in this way. IFOAM is convinced that a dynamic development of organics rests on maintaining this right, in conjunction with a provision for delegation of accreditation to private programs which fulfill international accreditation norms..."

National Organic Standards Board member and organic farmer Fred Kirschenmann recently pointed out in Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly (#583 Jan. 29, 1998) that there is, however, at least one sector in America that loves the new proposed organic standards: "Who would benefit from this rule? It would be a boon for the conventional agribusiness food system which has, for years, sought to eliminate any differentiation in the marketplace that threatens their market share. This rule would simultaneously erase most of the major distinctions between organic and conventional food, make it illegal to use any other eco-labels, and prevent private certifiers from certifying to any standard other than the one proposed by the USDA. One could hardly imagine a single piece of regulation that could bring more joy and comfort to the agribusiness food industry."

In an interview with the St. Louis Post Dispatch on Jan. 15, A spokeswoman for Monsanto, Lisa Drake, made it clear that Monsanto expects the Clinton administration to allow genetically engineered crops, such as their Bt-spliced potatoes and cotton, to be allowed, at least eventually, under the organic label. Monsanto's major concern is that there be no overt prohibition on genetically engineered inputs in the first set of final rules. According to Drake "We think biotechnology fits quite well (under the organic label)." Giant industry trade associations - whose members are heavy financial contributors to the Clinton-Gore administration - such as the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, and the National Food Processors Association, have also lobbied heavily for implementation of the controversial USDA proposals.

But besides the gene engineers and corporate agribusiness, it is generally agreed that these standards are totally unacceptable, that the hundreds of pages of proposed regulations issued on Dec. 16, 1997 are fatally flawed, cannot be fixed, and need to be withdrawn (See Food Bytes #6 Jan. 20, 1998). Everyone also seems to agree that the battle over these rules is a crucial battle, the outcome of which will decide, not only if the word "organic" will totally lose its meaning and integrity in the United States, but, in the larger global picture, will determine to a significant extent if any alternatives to the globalized industrialization of agriculture will be allowed to legally exist, period.

If the Clinton administration succeeds in outlawing real organic standards and forcing mis-labeled agribusiness style "organic" food down the throats of American consumers, a global "race to the bottom" will surely follow. With literally no practical marketplace alternative to genetically engineered, chemically contaminated, and factory farmed food, consumers will almost inevitably become fatalistic and immobilized--with grave consequences for public health, biodiversity, small farmers, and economic sustainability.

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