An organic industry watchdog has released a white paper outlining how what it describes as uninspected organic imports have driven U.S. farmers out of lucrative markets.
The results of its findings triggered a formal request to the USDA Office of Inspector General to investigate the apparent systemic failure by the agency’s National Organic Program to enforce federal law, according to a news release.
Research conducted by Wisconsin-based OrganicEye, an organic governmental and corporate watchdog, documented how hazelnut farmers in the Pacific Northwest are being shut out of the market and dramatically undercut on price, resulting in the lawsuit filed by one of its farmer-members last fall in federal district court.
More recently, farmers in Florida and Hawaii, who were once successfully supplying the domestic wholesale market with turmeric, have contacted OrganicEye’s hotline to report that they too are losing their livelihoods — despite the fact that turmeric, a culinary herbal root, has greatly increased in popularity due to its documented anti-inflammatory and other medicinal qualities, the release said.
OrganicEye says the issue of foreign agribusinesses inspecting and certifying their own farmer-suppliers, as opposed to abiding by requirements outlined in the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 requiring all farms to be certified and inspected on an annual basis by independent, USDA-accredited agents, was first brought to the public’s attention by OrganicEye when a federal lawsuit was filed in October 2023.
“When we first commercialized the organic farming movement in earnest, in the 1980s, the foundational marketplace messaging was that all production and advertising claims would be verified for authenticity by independent certifiers. And the operative term is, ‘independent’,” Mark Kastel, executive director at OrganicEye, said in the release.
Subsequently, when Congress passed OFPA as part of the 1990 farm bill, it adopted the heretofore voluntary certification protocol requiring every farm and manufacturer making organic claims to be overseen by independent third parties that would, going forward, be directly supervised and audited by the USDA, the release said.
“Although almost universally complied with in domestic production, that system has completely broken down for imports,” Kastel said. “A large percentage of all foreign imports, making up a sizable amount of the organic food Americans eat, are coming from ‘producer groups,’ whose grower-members the USDA has exempted from the requirements to be certified.”
Although there is no legal provision for the exemption, decades ago certifiers started allowing cooperatives, small villages or groups of indigenous peoples producing high-value specialty crops like coffee, chocolate or spices, to be grouped together in “peer-supervised” producer groups, according to the release. It was assumed that the small landholders would not be able to afford individual certification and inspections and the exception would both help them access world markets, improving their economic standing, and provide authentic organic food to more affluent Western countries.
OrganicEye says that system, despite not initially having any legal basis, has been co-opted and applied to crops being produced on commercial-scale farms and including many agricultural commodities and ingredients that have been previously competitively produced in the U.S.
“Instead of community elders acting as liaisons in the group certification process, we have agribusiness employees conducting up to 98% inspections,” Kastel said. “The buyers of these commodities have an economic interest and are anything but independent. And they are certainly not an accredited certification agency, as is required by law.”
OrganicEye says it is encouraging organic shoppers to seek out U.S.-grown products when buying food. The group is asking organic stakeholders, farmers, ethical business participants and consumers to contact their congressional representatives about attempts to weaken federal law prohibiting uncertified or uninspected organic imports, the release said.
