A US newspaper has called into question the value of the USDA organic label after an investigation found the country’s Department of Agriculture has not kept on top of necessary regulation.
The Dallas Morning News discovered the USDA does not know how many organic regulations have been abused and has not always acted when violations have been uncovered.
Jim Riddle, former chairman of the US National Organics Standards Board and an appointed advisor to the USDA when the organic standards were enacted in 2002, said: “The USDA has failed to enforce the regulations.
“There have been no prosecutions of violations for the organic law yet.”
The US organic market is still relatively small but growing at a rate of 16 per cent a year. USDA executive in charge of the National Organic Program, Barbara Robinson, admitted her small staff has struggled to keep pace with the level of growth.
“When you have eight or nine people and everybody wants something, you try to do a little bit of everything,” she said, adding that the USDA’s label is as trustworthy as the people growing and monitoring the products.
Robinson acknowledged that the agency has not as yet fined anyone for misusing the label, but certain products have been ordered to stop trading under it.
However, according to the Dallas newspaper, a review of 216 internal USDA audits revealed a number of violations at organic production sites. And breakdowns in the process of feedback from monitors on the ground to the agency are frequent, it found.