So, What’s ‘Organic,’ Anyway?

Not long ago, attractive, affordable organic foods were harder to get than tickets to the World Series. Now, the organic industry is booming, with sales last year of $3.5 billion. Big supermarket chains, conventional food companies and even Wall Street are paying attention to this niche gone mainstream.

But guess what? There’s still no national definition for the word “organic,” which is generally thought to mean foods produced without chemicals.

It was, after all, nearly eight years ago when the Organic Foods Production Act was passed as part of the 1990 Farm Bill. The act required that the Department of Agriculture define “organic,” develop lists of allowable and nonallowable materials, and establish a certification program to ensure that farmers and processors follow the rules.

So what’s taken so long?

Lon Hatamiya, administrator of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which is in charge of developing the standards, said the principal reason for the delay is the “complexity” of the topic. The regulation covers everything grown, processed and marketed organically, including fruit, vegetables, livestock and poultry. It’s an entirely new system, Hatamiya said. “This has never been done before.”

“Even so,” he said, it’s “taken too long, and we admit that.”

Katherine DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Assn., offered some more specific explanations for the delay. For one thing, no funds were appropriated during the first couple of years to carry out the act, she said. For another, a board made up of farmers, processors, scientists, retailers and consumer and environmental representatives--created to advise the USDA on setting the standards--”insisted on having a lot of public comment,” DiMatteo said. And finally, she said, once the board’s recommendations were sent to the USDA, there were delays in putting them into “regulatory language.”

So what’s the status of the proposed regulations, said to be 600 pages long?

They’re currently being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget, where they have been since the middle of June. Once released, they’ll be published in the Federal Register. Then comes a 90-day public comment period, during which consumers will be able to comment via the Internet (a USDA first). The USDA has to incorporate those comments into a final regulation, and then it has to implemented. All of this could take a couple more years.

In the meantime, Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D-Vermont), instigator of the 1990 organic act, wrote a letter to the OMB recently urging the agency to publish the proposal, and not “go back to the drawing board and have USDA propose simple rules instead.” Leahy wrote that he has “heard, I hope incorrectly,” that the OMB wants to simplify the detailed proposal, a proposal the organic industry endorses as is. The OMB had no comment.

Despite the lack of uniform standards, the organic industry has seen incredible growth, with sales increasing by more than 20% annually over the past seven years, according to the Organic Trade Assn.

And even though there are no federal standards, 17 states have laws governing organic foods, and there are 33 private certification organizations that verify organic production according to industry standards, said the OTA.

Still, while about 5,000 farms that produce organic foods are currently certified by states or private groups, an equal or greater number is not.

DiMatteo said there are other reasons a national law is still important. Even though the standards set by states and private certifying groups aren’t dramatically different, “there are enough inconsistencies” that sometimes problems can occur in interstate commerce, she said.

In addition, a national standard is key to consumer trust, DiMatteo said. Shoppers “may not fully understand what ‘organic’ is, but they value it. That value has to be guaranteed.”

Hatamiya said national standards will create a “level playing field” and a more competitive marketplace, expand exports and encourage organic production in commodities such as meat and poultry. With national standards, organic production “will explode,” Hatamiya said.