New standards may boost already soaring organic food industry

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New standards may boost already soaring organic food industry

 

March 6, 2000

Web posted at: 12:42 PM EST (1742 GMT)

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans hunger for any food promoted as natural, consuming

$6 billion worth of products labeled organic. Often, consumers have no guarantee

those foods actually were grown and processed without synthetic chemicals

 

That should change with the release, as early as this week, of the first

national standards for organic food.

 

The rules, expected to take effect this summer, will spell out for the first

time what it means for foods to be labeled organic. They also will bar the use

of genetically engineered crops or irradiated ingredients in organic foods.

 

Food grown and processed in accordance with those rules can carry a seal of

approval from the U.S. Agriculture Department, agency officials say.

 

Targeting 'consumer confidence'

 

The rules " give the consumers assurance that they've been looking for that the

products meet a set of standards that have been enforced and that those

standards are the same regardless of the state it was grown in, " said Katherine

DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Association.

 

" That will build consumer confidence in the label and certainly will encourage

sales. "

 

Critics of the organic industry say the rules could lead consumers into thinking

organic products are safer or more nutritious than conventional food. There is

no evidence that is true, said Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for

Consumer Research at the University of California-Davis

 

" I hope they will understand what organic means and make this an informed

choice, " she said.

 

Out of the 10,000 farms nationwide that claim to be organic, only 6,600 are

approved by the 88 different state or private certifying agencies around the

country.

 

Nineteen states have no regulations for organic farming. Eleven others,

including California, have production standards but no certification process for

ensuring that farmers comply with them.

 

Explosive growth

 

Meanwhile, the industry has been growing at a rate of 20 percent annually over

the past decade. Sales are expected to reach $6 billion this year, according to

the trade association.

 

Some of the nation's biggest food manufacturers are getting into the

natural-foods business, including General Mills Inc. and H.J. Heinz Co. General

Mills has a new organic cereal and announced in December that it was buying

Small Planet Foods, a leading producer of organic food products.

 

The organic market is likely to continue growing at a double-digit pace for

years to come, said David Nelson, a food industry analyst with CS First Boston.

 

" Consumers are buying food less as a staple or basic fuel and more as an

expression of lifestyle, like clothing or choice of car. It's a niche market

certainly, but rapidly growing, " he said.

 

Setting standards

 

The rules are expected to:

- Require that farmers go through a mandatory planning process and have their

practices certified by an approved state or private agency.

- Restrict the pesticides, fertilizers and seed treatments they can apply.

- Limit the kind of additives and packaging processors can use. Banned will be

additives like sulfites, nitrates or nitrite, for example.

 

Congress ordered national organic standards in 1990. Seven years later, rules

proposed by USDA were rejected by the industry because they left open the

possibility of allowing irradiated and genetically engineered food and the use

of sewage sludge as fertilizer. Those possibilities have been ruled out in the

new proposals, said Andy Solomon, a spokesman for Agriculture Secretary Dan

Glickman.

 

Producers and processors are expected to have 18 months to comply; enforcement

is left to states and private agencies approved by USDA.

 

In the absence of national standards, foods claiming to be organic are labeled

in many different ways. Some list a certifying agency, others do not.

 

" They can charge more if it says organic and it may not be, " said Jennifer

Brenner, who was shopping at a Fresh Fields natural foods store in Falls Church,

Virginia. " It's healthy whether it's truly organic or not, but it would be nice

to know for sure. "

 

The store carried four varieties of organic apple sauce: One claimed

certification by " OCIA, " a reference to the Organic Crop Improvement

Association; a second was certified by Vermont Organic Growers; a third cited a

private California certifying agency, Quality Assurance International; the label

on Fresh Fields' house brand simply said it was grown in accordance with

California law.