The Organic Industry Is in Turmoil

by Julie Kelly July 12, 2017 4:00 AM @Julie_Kelly2

 

As Amazon buys Whole Foods, the USDA investigates whether foods sold as “organic” in the U.S. really are. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, the grocer that brought pricey organic food to the masses, comes during a time of turmoil in the organic industry: The Department of Agriculture is continuing to investigate the importation of millions of pounds of phony organic grains.

 

The move is in response to a lengthy Washington Post exposé published in May that tracked shipments of corn and soybeans from Turkey, Romania, and Ukraine that were labeled “organic” but were not (I wrote about it here). The Post reported that the fraudulent imports were “large enough to constitute a meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those commodities,” a troubling development that should raise serious questions about the veracity of the organic label, since these grains are mostly being used as livestock feed to meet National Organic Program’s (NOP) standards.

Organic meat and dairy products must be sourced from animals fed only organic grains; this has led to an enormous surge in imports over the past few years, since nearly all the corn and soybeans grown here are from genetically modified seeds, verboten in organic production. Organic soybean imports have jumped sixfold from 2011, and organic corn imports have quadrupled since 2013; Turkey is now the largest exporter of both crops to the U.S......To Read More....