Laura Batcha, chief executive of the Organic Trade Association, in the wake of two bombshell regulatory setbacks delivered in recent months by the Trump administration, said that the public-private partnership that has existed for years is shifting to private-sector initiative. On Thursday, Batcha announced an OTA pilot project to prevent fraud in the organics supply chain. The group, she said, is also exploring a voluntary checkoff program to fund promotion and research for organics.
In past five months, the USDA has killed two of the OTA’s long-sought goals. Last December, it axed a regulation setting animal welfare standards for livestock on organic farms. Then, in early May, it withdrew a proposed checkoff program for organics — the first checkoff that would have applied to a mode of production rather than a specific product, such as milk, cotton, or eggs.
“It’s a real watershed moment for this industry,” Batcha said of the USDA decision on livestock. She told reporters at the OTA’s annual policy conference that she was taken by surprise at the withdrawal of the checkoff. In both cases, the USDA said it didn’t have the authority to issue such regulations, although they had been in development for years under previous administrations.
Organic food, the fastest-growing segment of the grocery industry, now accounts for 5.5 percent of U.S. food sales, according to an OTA survey. Organic food rang up $45.2 billion in sales last year, a rise of 6.4 percent from the previous year, although dairy and egg sales rose by just 0.9 percent. Batcha said consumer doubts about the integrity of organic livestock standards, sparked by the USDA’s withdrawal of the livestock rule, was a factor.
The three-month pilot on fraud detection was developed by an OTA task force and includes the USDA’s National Organic Program as a collaborator. The project grew out of published reports of imported grain that was sold at premium prices on the claim that it was organic when it was not.
“The foxes are now very serious about guarding the hen house,” the Cornucopia Institute said of the project. Cornucopia, which clashes frequently with the OTA, says it advocates “economic justice for the family-scale farming community,” and contends that the OTA is controlled by large operators and food makers.
“We’ll also be exploring whether there is feasibility of moving forward on the private side” on a checkoff, said Batcha. “There are voluntary checkoff programs that exist outside of USDA. The need is not diminished.”
Also at the conference, Gary Hirshberg, the co-founder of Stonyfield Farm, said an independent effort known as Organic Voices would promote the industry in the absence of a checkoff. Thirty companies will contribute a total of $1 million per year for the next two years to fund a messaging campaign that would address the “skepticism and confusion” about the organic label.
“This will be our checkoff,” he said, and might be a bridge to a future voluntary checkoff program that would engage more companies within the organic sector. Although he acknowledged that $2 million paled in comparison to the $30 million a checkoff could have raised, it was necessary now that the checkoff was off the table. The money would flow into the Organic Voices Action Fund, a nonprofit that funded the Just Label It campaign around GMOs.