USDA Trying to Make Organic Standards Meaningless -- Again!

And, Oh, By the Way, the Draft Amendment's Standards Just Happen to Match the Weak and Meaningless Codex Organic Standards! 

Tell Congress to protect our Organic Standards: Defeat the Draft Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill 

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202-225-3121

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!  Where have I heard this before?

·        Give farmers the right to use veterinary drugs and calling the resulting meat and milk organic. 

·        Allow dangerous pesticides and hormones to be used on organic animals. 

·        Require the irradiation of all food. 

·        Convert crops and herds back and forth from organic to non organic and back again. 

Hmmmmmm..... Why does that sound familiar, too?  Right!  Codex.  But the Codex Coma people tell us that we have nothing to worry about because we have all these protective laws and regulations here in the US.  Right?  Right, except for the fact that those protective standards are being chipped away, one by one.

Here's the game: whether it is legislative assault on DSHEA or OFPA, or the EPA decision to ban the wildly dangerous pesticides forbidden by the Stockholm Convention but brought back by Codex, each and every protective standard here in the US is being attacked to clear the way for "HARMonization" with Codex.

Here's the latest: Our hard-won Organic Standards are being diluted, polluted and destroyed by the US Congress with the help of major food companies like Kraft, Wal-Mart, Dean Foods an, disappointingly, the very active assistance of USDA and the Organic Trade Association.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in charge of Organic Food Standards with the ongoing advice of the National Organic Standards Board.  Like the FDA, controlled by Big Pharma, the USDA is deeply influenced by corporate food interests.  And, like Big Pharma, they are, with very rare exceptions, focused sharply on the bottom line and nothing else. So there has been continuing pressure for decades to degrade and eliminate meaningful organic standards.  Remember when the USDA was prepared to allow the use of toxic sludge containing heavy metals and other deadly toxins for the fertilization of food?  Well, they are at it again. 

Claiming that the Harvey v. Veneman case and its appeal verdict  (in which the USDA was required to bring its rules into conformity with the Organic Foods Production Act [OFPA, 1990]), the USDA and its commercial allies now claim illogically that this case requires a weakening of those rules (!) 

Not surprisingly, the House/Senate Conference Committee is set to accept Draft Amendments currently being circulated which do not accurately respond to the requirements of the Federal Court Decision and its appeal, but contain wording which will:

• Permit the addition of synthetic substances to organic products
• Allow organically raised and fed animals to receive antibiotics and other drugs and then be administratively "converted" back to 'organic',
• Allow increased amounts of non-organic feed for "organic" animals
• Allow synthetic pesticides on organic crops and farms

How convenient that these changes in the intent and content of OFPA just happen to conform to the international trade regulations promugated by Codex on Organic foods!  And how convenient that unless the regulations and laws of a country permit them to apply, Codex standards, we are told, do not apply.

"Stealth Regulation" is an old, unfortunate and very serious problem in the US Congress. Food is big, big business and our food regulations come both from the FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Last week,  the House/Senate Conference Committee put the final wording together for the 2006 Congressional Agriculture Appropriations Bill.  And, if you want to keep on buying organic food that means anything at all, it's time to get activated to stop the next atrocity. 

If the large corporations involved here, like Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods with the very active help of the USDA,  have their way, the Conference Committee will carry out their will and degrade the organic standards so that they no longer offer a meaningful alternative to genetically modified, pesticide and toxin-rich produce and veggies, meat, milk and poultry which has not been treated with drugs and hormones and products free of synthetics.

Much like the Wellness Industry, the organic foods market share of the food market is growing rapidly (20%+ annual increase each year since 1990).  The Organic Consumers Association says, "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 are moving to lower organic standards 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, according to the Organic Consumers Association,  "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 letter to Congress NOW!

The U.S. Congress will be vigorously lobbied by industry over the next week to vote on a rider in the House/Senate Conference Committee to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that could remove organic standards from the National Standards Board to USDA bureaucrats in the USDA who proposed in 1997-98 to approve that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation on organic farms.  Those same USDA bureaucrats proposed in 2004 that previously  banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs be allowed in organic food