From www.cornucopia.org
Cornucopia Institute Seeks Records on Lack of Organic Food Standards
Enforcement
CORNUCOPIA, WI: The Cornucopia Institute
has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to compel the USDA to provide
public records sought through several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests. The Institute is a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group
and organic food watchdog.
We have gone into federal court because the USDA has been unwilling
to provide us with important records that would help us and our farmer-members
and consumers understand why the USDA has delayed enforcement of key
federal organic farming standards for five years, said Will Fantle, the
Institute's Research Director. These are documents that they are obligated,
by law, to share with the public.
At issue is the record of correspondence and discussions that have taken
place at the USDA between USDA staff and corporate lobbyists, farm organizations,
and the public, concerning the requirement that organic dairy cows have
access to pasture and obtain a significant portion of their feed from
grazing.
The lawsuit comes amidst a growing national debate occurring in the
organic farming community over the rise of factory farms in organic dairying,
milking 2000 to 6000 cows in confinement-type conditions, that provide
little if any pasture for their milk cows. Public interest groups and
farmers have accused the USDA of purposefully ignoring the matter for
years, a fact that has allowed these gigantic farms to proliferate and
gain a growing foothold in the booming organic marketplace.
We know that powerful companies, with organic interests, spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars lobbying the USDA last year, said Fantle. Large
dairy marketers and the factory farms they are procuring organic milk
from are financially benefiting from USDA footdragging on this matter.
When the National Organic Standards Board was ready to close loopholes
and tighten federal organic rules in August 2005, staff at the USDA unexpectedly
and without explanation blocked action by their expert advisory panel.
We smell a rat, said Fantle, and we want to see if there are corporate
fingerprints on the USDA's critical policy reversal.
Three FOIA requests, filed since August 2005, have never been complied
with by the USDA. The agency released some documents in response to a
fourth FOIA request but withheld several others, without explanation,
prompting an appeal from the Institute that is also now part of the federal
lawsuit.
We expect USDA to honor the letter of the law in a timely fashion, something
they have yet to do, said Gary Cox, counsel for the Institute.
Transparency is important in government if the public is to have faith
in its decisions, Cox added. And transparency is doubly important in
organic agriculture, where consumers care deeply about their food and
how it is produced.
Fantle noted that frustration with USDA inaction led Cornucopia to more
closely investigate the organic dairy industry and what goes into the
dairy foods being sold to the consumer. Their recently released report,
Maintaining the Integrity of Organic Milk, and accompanying scorecard,
based on a year of research, ranks 68 different retail organic dairy
brands and measures the organic ethics and integrity involved in their
production.
If the USDA is reluctant to enforce organic regulations, we believe
consumers should know which brands represent their ethics and values,
explained Fantle. Our scorecard spotlights the heroes and identifies
companies that are cutting corners.
The report is available on the group's Web page at www.cornucopia.org