USDA Needs to Clarify Organic Clarification
Alex Avery, Director of Research at the Center for Global Food Issues, has written to the National Organic Program at the United States Department of Agriculture, asking why they are misleading farmers, consumers, and policy makers about the status of organic crops that test positive for biotech-derived crop material, and whether they’re doing it deliberately.
Alex Avery, Director of Research at the Center for Global Food Issues, has
written to the National Organic Program at the United States Department of
Agriculture, asking why they are misleading farmers, consumers, and policy
makers about the status of organic crops that test positive for biotech-derived
crop material, and whether they’re doing it deliberately.
The USDA’s
rules clearly state that so called “GM contamination” will not affect the
organic status of a crop or farm. In fact, the USDA admitted in a December 2004
letter to the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture that not
a single crop or farmer has ever lost “organic” status based on so-called “GM
contamination.”
In answering this question on their website, however,
the NOP misquotes USDA rules and adds unnecessary and confusing language: “The
unintentional presence of the products of excluded methods will not affect the
status of the organic operation. As to the status of the commodity, USDA’s
position is that this is left to the buyer and seller to resolve in the
marketplace through their contractual relationship. (See page 80556 of the
preamble, “Applicability—Clarifications; (1) “Genetic drift”).” http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Q&A.html
The cited
section of the organic regulations actually states, “the unintentional presence
of the products of excluded methods should not affect the status of an organic
product or operation.” http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/standards/ApplicPre.html The
rules say nothing about commodity status being left to buyer and seller to
resolve.
After repeated phone calls and emails to the NOP, a public
affairs spokeswoman emailed the following clarification to the Center for Global
Food Issues: “According to USDA and the regulation, the crop status IS NOT
adversely affected. But buyers and sellers in the market may have agreements;
USDA does not enforce or intervene in private contracts under the National
Organic Program. Also, the National Organic Program does not have a tolerance
level for GMOs (like for chemical residues) at which food may no longer be sold
as organic, and the preamble says the absence of this tolerance level does NOT
create a zero tolerance.”
The NOP office has refused suggestions to
correctly quote their own rules or to add a clarification to their website,
thereby allowing the confusion to continue.
For years, organic activists
have misled reporters and the public on this issue, helping them gather public
support for local-level biotech crop bans such as the one passed in Mendocino
California last year. The question is why the USDA is adding to the deliberate
organic industry confusion?
Contact:
Alex Avery, Director of
Research
Center for Global Food Issues
(540) 337-6354, or -6387
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb207031.htm