Ronnie Cummings
Pure Food Campaign & Organic Consumers Association
June 5, 1998
An Open Letter to U.S. Organic Consumers
by Ronnie Cummins, National Coordinating Committee, Organic Consumers Association (OCA)
Dear Organic Food Consumer,
Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued their controversial proposed federal regulations on organic food in December 1997, the most common response from concerned--and often outraged--consumers has been: "How can we stop them from doing this?" First, we and other groups recommended that consumers bury the USDA in an avalanche of comments and turn up the heat on Congress. Much to the surprise and dismay of the Clinton administration, this is exactly what happened. A record 220,000 consumers sent in letters to the USDA basically calling for these bogus rules to be withdrawn, and 100,000 people called their Senators and Representatives.
After swamping the USDA with comments and alerting the Congress that millions of voters were opposed to the USDA's clumsy attempt to engineer an "unfriendly takeover" of organics on behalf of the corporate special interests who dominate industrial agriculture, we and our allies began to implement the second part of our strategy. We joined up with leading organic certifiers and organic retailers and began moving toward the establishment of a set of strict national and internationally recognized organic standards and labels independent of the USDA. This independent certification and labeling process is now steadily moving forward with the support of 27 private and state organic certifiers as well as leading retail and consumer organizations, both at home and abroad.
Now we stand in the shadow of the USDA's impending Final Rule on organics. The Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and the Organic Watch Coalition have identified no fewer than 60 major problems with the USDA's proposed federal regulations. On May 8, the USDA announced, with great fanfare, that they were backing off--at least temporarily--on three of these major deal-breakers (i.e. including genetic engineering, toxic sewage sludge, and nuclear irradiation under the "USDA Organic" label). USDA Secretary Dan Glickman apparently believes that these concessions on the "Big Three" will pacify us. He is wrong. USDA bureaucrats have admitted publicly that, despite heavy consumer opposition, they will not withdraw their proposed regulations. They plan to publish legally-binding proposed final rules in late-1998 or 1999. This Final Rule will allow large corporate factory farms to fill up the shelves of mainstream supermarkets with products labeled "USDA Organic," but of course these so-called "organic" products will be little different from the "industrial food" now served up by America's food giants. The Final Rule, the USDA tell us, will be a compromise rule, something we must swallow for the good of the economy and the bottom line of the Big Players in the food sector. "Trust us," they say, "we've heard your comments."
On behalf of organic consumers, our response to the USDA is "No, we do not trust you." We can only judge the USDA by their concrete actions over the past few decades, not their rhetoric over the past month. If the USDA sincerely wants to try to gain the trust of the organic community and the consumer public at large--something they've never had--there is only one thing they can do: back off for several years and let the organic community prove that we can regulate ourselves. Leading organic certifiers have already agreed that they are willing and able to unite and adopt common high standards which basically conform with the recommendations of the National Organic Standards Board and international IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) requirements. This is not only what 90% of consumers want, this is what we demand.
Any Final Rule published by the USDA which gives Washington bureaucrats a monopoly on the word "organic" is totally unacceptable. Any Final Rule which prohibits non-governmental organic certifiers and state government certifiers from labeling according to standards higher than the minimum standards of the USDA represents a violation of our Constitutional rights to free speech. Any Final Rule that prohibits producers and certifiers from utilizing eco-labels that even imply organic production will be vehemently opposed. As the proposed USDA rules read now, Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue, Cargill, Kroger, Safeway, McDonald's--any of America's food giants--will have the legal option to sue any farmer, any co-op, any retailer, or any processor or handler in court if we certify or label, or even imply in our advertising, that our products are actually "real organic" products, which exceed the world's lowest minimum organic requirements, those of the USDA.
In the shadow of the Final Rule, we must get organized. Our firm belief is that those of us concerned about organics and the politics of our food, those of us who want to "save organic standards" and "keep organic organic" must organize ourselves into a mass-based grassroots network and citizens lobby. For this reason a group of leading consumer and organic advocates across the country have decided to establish a new activist organization for organic consumers, the Organic Consumers Association.
To force the USDA to back off and let the organic community regulate itself under its own internationally recognized rules will require an unprecedented grassroots mobilization. Thousands of us began this mobilization process early in 1998 with the launch of local and state SOS (Save Organic Standards) campaigns. These grassroots SOS efforts sounded the alarm and provided the initial spark for what then became an unprecendented national consumer rebellion against the USDA. Now we must step up our public education and mobilization efforts--before the USDA proposes its Final Rule. To do this we need your support and participation. To save organic standards and turn American agriculture around we need to organize a nationwide Organic Consumers Association (OCA) with chapters in every state and Congressional District.
Starting with collecting the email addresses, fax numbers, street addresses, and telephone numbers of people who feel passionately about organic food issues in hundreds of communities across the country, the organizers of the OCA have begun to build a sizeable database for two-way communications and mobilization. Thousands of organic consumers across the country have already volunteered to participate in the new OCA networks. Many organic retailers, co-ops, and organic producers have also volunteered to help. Consumers have begun to volunteer to serve on coordination teams in their Congressional Districts or states. Enlisting the cooperation of over 800 natural food co-ops, retail stores, farmers markets, and other community organizations (holistic health practitioners, community restaurants, public interest organizations, vegetarian and animal protection groups, community media, etc.), our growing national network will soon reach the point where we can rapidly communicate with and mobilize thousands of people in each state.
These OCA "Grassroots Action" networks (email, world wide web, fax, mail, and telephone tree networks) will enable us to keep people abreast of the latest developments, so that when the USDA announces its "proposed Final Rule" later this year, or next year, we can respond immediately. Once again thousands of phone calls, letters, faxes, and emails will pour in from all 50 states and 435 Congressional districts and turn up the heat in Washington. Bolstered as well by other forms of citizen action and grassroots lobbying, ideally we'll be able to make the USDA and the Clinton Administration back off from issuing a Final Rule (if not we'll sue them in federal court). Once we do this we'll be well on the road to achieving the basic goals of the OCA: to preserve strict organic standards and to move U.S. agriculture in a more sustainable and humane direction. Ultimately our goal is to make certain that organic agriculture expands from being a $4 billion dollar industry (representing approximately 1-2% of total U.S. agriculture production) into becoming the dominant form of producing food and fiber in the U.S.--and across the world.
6/15/98