To meet consumer demands, organic animal and crop production has grown a great deal in the past decade. Crop acres have more than doubled to the current 5.4-plus million acres split between crops and pasture. By another measure, sales, organic food purchases have tripled during that same time span, growing to $35 billion annually.
Like any sector that experiences that rapid degree of growth, sometimes the sales euphoria can outpace market regulations. That has been the case with organic food production, which is wrought with more rules than those found in traditional food sectors. Since USDA cannot keep pace with its own certifiers, it employs outside contractors. It's those outside groups that haven't always been doing their job.
There are currently 81 accredited certifying agents employed by USDA. However, The Wall Street Journal unearthed a recent internal USDA report that found a subset of these subcontractors - 23 of 37 that had a complete review this year - are not doing their jobs properly. That means nearly two-thirds of outside certifiers are not upholding all the standards of the "USDA Organic" seal.
The internal audit found that those 23 firms didn't properly conduct onsite inspections or incorrectly reviewed applications for organic certification, reported The Wall Street Journal.
If that isn't alarming enough, a separate investigation found that 40 percent of the entire group of 81 outside certifiers failed to conduct complete inspections; 16 percent didn't cite potential use of pesticides and antibiotics by organic producers . . . a definite no-no; while 5 percent failed to catch potential co-mingling of products, noted Wall Street Journal's Caelainn Barr in her December 10, 2014, article.
Those outside certifiers and inspectors that fall out of compliance do have an opportunity to fix the problem in the audit procedures. Meanwhile, USDA's own staff faired much better, with 97 percent following USDA Organic Rules rigorously in field audits.
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2015
January 26, 2015
