Organic trade association "modified" by gmo interests - China Portable Speakers For Laptops

The food and crop-biotechnology industries raised a war chest to fight theballot measure. Ironically, some of these companies already hadstakes in organic and some had subsidiaries that were members of OTA. General Mills (currently represented on the OTA board by CraigWeakly of Small Planet Foods), H.J. Heinz Co. (invested in theHain-Celestial Group), PepsiCo (Tropicana and Quaker produce a few organic products ), and Kellogg's (owns Kashi), joined a coalition of corporategiants - the "Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law" -including chemical makers Monsanto and DuPont, agribusiness ConAgra, food processor Sara Lee, the pesticide lobbying group CropLife and the junk food lobbying group theGrocery Manufacturers Association, in spending some $5.5 million todefeat mandatory GMO labels.

By contrast, the pro-label group, Oregon Concerned Citizens forSafe Foods, raised only about $100,000 in cash, loans and in-kindcontributions and had already spent about $72,000 to collectsignatures, when Food Inc. rolled in with $5.5 million to spend on advertising . The Safe Foods group's largest contributor was Mel Bankoff,founder of Emerald Valley Kitchen Inc., a Eugene, OR organic food company, who gave $47,500, most of it in loans, state recordsshow. The second largest donor was the Organic ConsumersAssociation.

In 2005, the same companies that worked through the GroceryManufacturers Association to defeat the Oregon GMO Truth-In-Labeling ballot measure worked through the OTA to executea sneak attack on organic standards . As Melanie Warner of the New York Times reported: 2005/11/01/business/01organic.html Senate and House Republicans on the Agriculture appropriationssubcommittee inserted a last-minute provision into the department'sfiscal 2006 budget specifying that certain artificial ingredients could be used inorganic food. The Organic Trade Association, an industry lobbying group thatproposed the amendment and spent several months pushing for itsadoption, says that the measure will encourage the continued growthof organic food. Some advocacy groups, however, say the amendment will weakenfederal organic food standards, first established under a 1990 law.Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic ConsumersAssociation, calls the initiative a "sneak attack engineered by thelikes of Kraft, Dean Foods and Smucker's." One of the lobbyists for Altria, Kraft's majority owner, AbigailBlunt - the wife of Representative Roy Blunt, Republican ofMissouri, who recently became interim House majority leader afterTom DeLay of Texas resigned from the post - has been working on theissue, the company says.

Dean Foods' subsidiary Horizon Organic and the J.M. SmuckerCompany, the owner of Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic juices [Dean &Smucker are currently represented on the OTA board by boardpresident Julia Sabin, VP, Smucker Natural Foods, Inc., and KellyShea, VP, WhiteWave Foods], said they supported the work by theOrganic Trade Association, which represents both large and smallcompanies in the business , but did no lobbying on their own. In 2009, the same companies that worked to defeat GMO labels and weaken organic standards were at it again, slipping syntheticingredients into organic products and stripping well-known organic brands of organic ingredients. AsLyndsey Layton reported in the Washington Post: Organic advocates and food marketing experts said the introductionthis month of new " natural " products by an organics division of Dean Foods is the latest signthat the value of the USDA label has eroded.

The yogurt and milk products will be distributedunder the Horizon label and marketed as a lower-priced alternativeto organic products. Congress adopted the organics law after farmers and consumers demanded uniform standards for produce, dairy and meat. The law banned synthetics, pesticides and genetic engineering from foods that would bear a federal organic label. It also required annualtesting for pesticides. And it was aimed at preventing producersfrom falsely claiming their foods were organic.

The USDA created the National Organic Program in 2002 to implement the law.By then, major food companies had bought up most small, independentorganic companies. Kraft Foods, for example, owns Boca Foods. Kellogg owns MorningstarFarms, and Coca-Cola owns 40 percent of Honest Tea, maker of theorganic beverage favored by President Obama. ... The Organic Trade Association, which represents corporations suchas Kraft, Dole and Dean Foods, lobbied for and received language ina 2006 appropriations bill allowing certain synthetic foodsubstances in the preparation, processing and packaging of organicfoods, creating conditions for a flood of processed organic foods.

The influence of non-organic corporate interests at the OTAexplains why it has consistently worked forlowest-common-denominator organic standards. It also explains why, by 2008, organic food sales accounted forapproximately 3.5 percent of all food product sales in the UnitedStates, but the percentage of U.S. organic production has remainedlow, at 0.7 percent of U.S. cropland and 0.5 percent of U.S.pasture, and the US organic market is reliant on imports fromcountries like China where the rules are more difficult to enforce. It's time the OTA was led by organic companies whose real stake isin U.S.

organic agriculture . The OTA should adopt rules that reserve a majority of slots onthe Board for 100% organic companies and farmers without conflicts of interest. Once the OTA has stronger organic leadership, it will be able toadvocate for stronger policies to strengthen organic standards,increase domestic organic production and protect organic fromgenetic contamination. OTA has a 2003 policy statement pp/regulatory/GE.html in support of a moratorium on genetically modified organisms in agricultureand for mandatory GMO labels, and OTA staff members have beenactive participants in anti-GMO efforts.

But, it's clear that OTA member companies owned by Food, Inc.,including those on the OTA board, haven't put their money where OTA's mouth is on the GE issue. Mandatory GMO labels is the only viable strategy to depriveMonsanto of market share and reduce the risk that our organic seedstocks will be permanently contaminated with Monsanto's modifiedDNA. Unfortunately, in our corporate-controlled pay-to-play system,passing mandatory GMO labeling laws in Congress , state legislatures, or through ballot measures takes money. Asthe Organic Spies documentary points out, OTA's Food Inc.

membersspend plenty of money on politics. The trouble is, it's going topoliticians and lobbying groups that support approval of new GMOs and oppose mandatory GMO labels. The only way for OTA to become truly effective is to demand of allof its members to invest in the campaign for mandatory GMO labels. Silk spent $29.1 million to advertise in major media in 2009.

Horizon Organic's advertising budget totaled $10.9 million in 2007,$9.3 million in 2008, $9.5 million in 2009 and $10.2 million lastyear. They could also start leading by example. What if the OTA requiredall member companies to adopt voluntary GMO labels? Smucker's, which sells 6 flavors of organic preserves and twoflavors of organic peanut butter , would have to label their non-organic ice cream toppings, jams,butters, waffles, syrups and pastries, as "made with GMO highfructose corn syrup ," "GMO trans fats," and "GMO sugar." The same would go for theirAdams, Laura Scudder's and Dickenson's brands, which sell organicpeanut butter and jams, but also sell varieties made with GMOhydrogenated vegetable oils and high fructose corn syrup. Dean Foods would have to reveal to consumers which brands of itsmilk were produced with the use of GMO bovine growth hormone.

A few of their milk brands are produced without artificial growthhormones (Alta Dena, Barber's Dairy, Berkeley Farms, Brown's Dairy,Creamland Dairy, Country Fresh, Gandy's, Garelick, Horizon, Dean's,Oak Farms Dairy, Organic Cow, Land O' Lakes, Lehigh Valley,Mayfield, McArthur, Meadow Brook, Meadow Gold, PET, Schepps, Swiss,T.G. Lee, and Tuscan), but they don't make that claim for BroughtonDairy, Friendship Dairy, Louis Trauth Dairy, Price's, Purity,Reiter, Robinson, or Shendandoah's Pride. The latter brands wouldhave to be labeled "from cows injected with genetically engineeredbovine growth hormones," and all of their non-organic brands wouldhave to admit coming from "cows raised on feed made with GMO soy, corn , cottonseed and alfalfa." Dean Food's International DelightNon-Dairy Creamer would have to label its GMO corn syrup.

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