Organic "Good Folks" Image Cracking

CHICAGO - Feb 8/06 - SNS -- The organic industry has an image of being populated by environmentally conscious people stumbling over one another with compliments and niceties.

However, the gloves are coming off with the proposed release of a rating of organic dairy brands and products being sold in the United States. The report from The Cornucopia Institute is designed to "empower consumers and wholesale buyers in the marketplace" by rating organic dairy brands based on their adherence to accepted ethical practices and conduct.

Without having read the report, the U.S.-based Organic Trade Association (OTA) is working hard to suppress it, asserting that no one in the organic community should say anything which might result in "distrust in organic farming and organic products".

The complaint was contained in a letter to The Cornucopia Institutes board members. The letter also stated the OTA is "opposed to tactics that cast doubt on the work of certified organic farms."

For its part, Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, says, "This report is a by-product of a five-year controversy that has been smoldering within the organic industry." He argues since the late 1990s a handful of large industrial-scale dairy operations, with up to 6,000 animals in factory-farm conditions, have started producing milk sold as 'organic'. Among other serious breaches these dairies are accused of is confining their animals rather than grazing on pasture.

"Even though there have been numerous meetings and thousands of letters and e-mails from organic farmers and consumers requesting that the United States Department of Agriculture clamp down on these factory farms, as well as surveys indicating overwhelming support from organic dairy farmers for enforcement actions against those who are scoffing at federal organic law, the USDA have done nothing to date," said Helen Keyes, a Cornucopia board member and certified organic livestock producer. "This puts ethical organic farmers at a competitive disadvantage."

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