For years, organic food has been the fastest-growing segment of U.S. agriculture, with a sales total of nearly $36 billion a year at latest count. “A deepening divide” is splitting the industry and “sparking litigation and allegations that the well-known label marking foods as organic no longer assures consumers that foods are free from chemicals and other materials, or that organic meat was raised naturally,” says Huffington Post.
A particularly bitter battle swirls around the use of the thickening agent carrageenan. “That issue and others are expected to generate fresh ire at an upcoming meeting of the National Organic Standards Board [on] April 25-27 in Washington.”
Two lawsuits allege that the USDA, which oversees the National Organic Program, improperly took steps that will weaken organic standards, says HuffPost. The department proposed animal welfare rules for organic poultry earlier this month, but a group representing independent growers said the USDA should have given the birds more room. The agency received 549 complaints about organic operations during fiscal 2015, nearly double the number of the previous year. Major food processors, such as Kellogg, General Mills and Hormel, have purchased organic companies in recent years, taking a prominent role in the industry long viewed as the domain of small farmers.
As an indicator of the strain in the industry, Bloomberg said U.S. imports of organic corn and soybeans more than doubled, to a combined 621,000 tonnes, in 2015, compared to 2014. “While organic feed remains a tiny portion of the U.S. grain market, it is growing rapidly,” said the news agency. Organic dairies hold 5 percent of the U.S. milk market, which has created shortages of organic livestock feed in a nation that is the largest corn and soybean producer in the world. All but a sliver of U.S. corn and soybeans are grown from GMO seeds. Organic farmers don’t use GMO crops.