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| Source: | LOHAS Weekly Newsletter |
| Published: | Wednesday, October 01, 1997 |
But industry representatives are urging a wait-and-see approach.
“The board of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is trying to be pragmatic and look at all situations, but ultimately we are opposed to genetic engineering,” OTA President Mark Retzloff says. “We don’t want to see loopholes.”
Consumer groups including Mothers for Natural Law and the Pure Food Campaign believe USDA’s standards, purported to be 600-pages long, will relax the recommendation of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) that GMOs be banned from organic agriculture.
The groups worry that the Clinton administration is bowing to pressure from large agribusinesses with significant expertise in GMO technology that want a piece of the ever-increasing $3.5 billion organic industry pie and will allow GMOs to be included on the national list of appropriate organic processes as an accepted synthetic.
They also fear that USDA, which must approve all NOSB members, will attempt to stack the board with appointees sympathetic to including GMOs.
Some but probably not all of their concerns may be well-founded, according to industry representatives.
“Undoubtedly, there are individuals in the USDA and government who may be trying to foist genetic engineering on the organic industry,” says Retzloff.
Bill Wolf, past president of the OTA and president of Wolf & Associates, an organic production-methods consulting firm, says that since the Clinton administration has come out in favor of genetic engineering for conventional agriculture, the development of organic standards has become a battleground for the larger worldwide social issue of genetically engineered conventional food.
“The reason the regulations have been delayed so long is because they present a difficult issue for the administration. It is upset that it may have to publish these rules and then have them used against it in fights with our trading partners,” Wolf says.
Even though international associations such as the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) have come out against the inclusion of any genetic engineering processes in organic agriculture, the European Union—some say at Clinton administration coaxing—is pushing Austria, Luxembourg and others of its members to relax bans on genetically engineered conventional grains. If the standards come out banning GMOs in organic agriculture, the administration’s EU policy could backfire.
But organic industry representatives say they are not sure about U.S. conventional agribusiness’s interest in the growing organic agriculture sector. “I think the organic industry may still be about as big as a rounding error as far as other agribusiness industries go,” says Bob Anderson, president and CEO of Pennsylvania-based Walnut Acres. Anderson currently serves as NOSB chairman.
Board stacking is a concern, but Anderson says if anything the board makeup is more organic-oriented now than it has been in the past. It presently consists of representatives from consumer advocacy groups, organic farming and processing, retailers, scientists, and environmentalists. Former boards have included mainstream food processors and university professors of conventional agriculture.
Kathleen Merrigan, senior analyst with the Washington-based Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, says there hasn’t been a board yet that has seen an application for GMOs upon which it would vote yes.
“However, the board does not appoint its own members—the secretary of agriculture does,” Anderson cautions.
No organic product manufacturer, processor or grower interviewed by Natural Business favors what is called trans-genic technology—the kind that creates genetic combinations not possible via natural processes. They are adamant in their position against Bacillus thuringiensis (B.T.) corn and Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant soybeans.
The gray areas for organic producers come on what Anderson calls the enzymatic side of genetic engineering. Currently in use in the organic industry are genetically engineered enzymes that replicate yet speed up natural processes, such as those in cheese. Some industry representatives believe the USDA rules should phase them out of organic production. Others say to do so would drive their costs out of control.
“What it might do is handicap the industry in terms of certain products because it would make them even less price-competitive with mainstream products,” an industry source says.
Anderson says the 90-day comment period that begins after the proposed standards are published in the Federal Register this fall will be critical to their final content.
“We need to aggressively comment during the period to make sure this is what we want organic to be in the next century. If the comment period is as dynamic as I think it will be, I believe the political environment will be responsive,” he says.
The Pure Food Campaign’s national director Ronnie Cummins says his group is gearing up to solicit 25,000 comments to Congress and USDA. But if the final standards don’t meet with Pure Food’s and others’ approval, a class-action suit against USDA is possible, Cummins says.
Such a reaction may not be in the best interests of the industry, Bill Knudsen, president of Smucker Quality Beverages, says.
“These people are very well-meaning but, unfortunately, when it’s all over, they go on to their next cause and we in the industry are stuck with dealing with what’s left.”