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Dec. 13, 2016 Source: Cornucopia Institute news release
If the independent Inspector General responds to Cornucopia's request, this will not be the first audit that they have performed at the request of the watchdog group. Past audits have been highly critical of the National Organic Program's accreditation program overseeing organic certification. "By failing to vigorously enforce the organic standards, USDA political appointees and NOP management have betrayed ethical family farmers and businesses, along with consumer trust," stated Mark A. Kastel, Cornucopia's codirector. "The NOP has ceded control of organic rulemaking and enforcement to lobbyists from the nation's most powerful agribusinesses." Cornucopia's letter cites a number of serious enforcement violations including: allowing soil-less hydroponic/container growing, which substitutes liquid fertilizers for careful stewardship of soil; allowing documented cases of "willful" violations on factory dairies confining livestock instead of grazing; and allowing as many as 200,000 "organic" chickens to be kept in single buildings without outdoor access. [Note: "willful" was the descriptor used by the USDA investigators when adjudicating allegations of violations and fraud lodged by The Cornucopia Institute.] "We have filed a series of lawsuits this year concerning the NOP's abuse of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These have forced the USDA to turn over documents that illustrate how the NOP views some giant corporate farms and the largest organic certifiers as 'too big to fail' even after investigators found them in 'willful' violation of the law," Kastel noted. Cornucopia's letter to the Inspector General also accuses the USDA of undermining the carefully crafted rulemaking structure that Congress devised to insulate organic policymaking from undue influence by corporate lobbyists. This includes undermining the congressional mandate that all non-organic and synthetic materials, approved for use in organics, must "Sunset" every five years. Unilaterally changing the Sunset review and voting process by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) elicited a strong rebuke by one of the organic law's original authors, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. In addition to 10 FOIA lawsuits currently being adjudicated in federal court, the National Organic Program is embroiled in three other lawsuits, two of which pertain to undermining the authority of the NOSB, including undermining Sunset, and one for failing to enforce the law pertaining to farm inputs contaminated with toxic pesticides. In making their case that the USDA has systemically looked the other way when gross violations are apparent, Cornucopia cites a series of complaints they filed in 2014 against 14 giant dairies and egg production facilities. Evidence supporting these complaints includes aerial photographs showing few, if any, cattle grazing and no chickens outdoors, in clear violation of the organic standards. The USDA initially refused to investigate these complaints, instead relying on certifiers' assurances, even though some of these certifiers have been proven to be co-conspirators or incompetent in past violation cases. "We resubmitted these complaints 14 months ago, this time against the certifiers," stated Marie Burcham, a livestock specialist and attorney on Cornucopia staff. "Based on the official guidance for adjudicating formal complaints, the USDA is obligated to investigate complaints against certifiers. So far, the USDA has failed in this obligation." "When the organic farming movement was commercialized in earnest, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, stakeholders petitioned Congress for strict regulations to maintain high integrity in organic agriculture," stated Kevin Engelbert, an organic dairy farmer from Nichols, New York. "The exponential increase in 'organic' milk coming from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the desert west, many allegedly cheating, continues to push down pricing and jeopardize the livelihoods of hard-working farm families across the country." Engelbert, a former member of the National Organic Standards Board, is recognized as the first certified organic dairy farmer in the U.S. Cornucopia's request to the Office of the Inspector General also asked them to look into financial mismanagement at the NOP. The group charges that the NOP has illegally withheld documents from the public and organic stakeholders that would allow them to evaluate the job performance of NOP management and staff. Furthermore, Cornucopia accuses the NOP of squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars paying for multiple staff to review documents and USDA in-house legal counsel to fight the release of this public information. "If the NOP was truly transparent and posted enforcement information on their website, none of these expenses would be necessary, and the public would be better informed," stated Jason Cole, a Cornucopia researcher who manages the organization's FOIA requests. In addition to their letter to the Inspector General, Cornucopia has sent a request to the two primary authors of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, Senator Leahy (VT) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (OR), asking the legislators to consider holding oversight hearings in the new Congress. Former NOSB board chair, Dr. Barry Flamm, who also sits on The Cornucopia Institute's board of directors, articulated his disappointment in the program by saying, "The best and brightest in the organic movement have volunteered their time over the past two decades to help craft a program that should assure farmers a level, competitive playing field and consumers the highest quality food. Instead we have USDA management abdicating their legal responsibilities and listening to the lobbyists at the Organic Trade Association and their corporate members, instead of the public who truly own the organic label." Tweet |
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