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[ElectroHerb] Organic Foods Movement- We the People or Heinz Corp in Charge?

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Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

The Organic Foods Movement - Led by Heinz Corporation or

We the People?

 

Published on Monday, May 31, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

The Organic Foods Movement - Led by Heinz Corporation or We the

People? The Time to Choose is Now

 

by Paul Cienfuegos

 

In the past few weeks, the USDA has once again attempted to weaken

the federal organics standards that so many Americans have worked

hard to enshrine into federal law. These changes would have allowed

food labeled as " USDA Organic " to contain hormones and antibiotics

in dairy cattle, pesticides on produce and potentially contaminated

fishmeal as feed for livestock. As happened with a number of other

outrageous recent USDA actions, citizens groups and the organic food

industry rallied in opposition, and were successful in reversing the

proposed changes.

 

The newest round of protests against such changes reminds us of the

more than 200,000 letters Americans sent to the USDA back in 1997/98

pleading with the agency to not allow toxic sludge, irradiated food,

and GMOs to be included in a list of allowable food growing

practices for the then-new federal organic food regulations. The

USDA backed down then as well, in the face of the outpouring of

public opinion. It seems we have won again. Or have we?

 

Could it be that handing regulatory authority over to the USDA

regarding organic foods creates a larger problem than it solves? And

is it conceivable that this problem could have been averted entirely

if we the people had thought more critically about our safe food

movement's own decision-making processes?

 

Let's review the history.

 

In the 1970s, the owners of many small local farms and food

production companies realized that they needed a new standard of

food production that would prohibit a wide variety of toxic

processes from ever coming in contact with their foods. These local

free-thinking individuals got together and drafted a set of proposed

organic food standards designed to become law at the state level. No

big food companies came out to oppose or weaken the legislation,

because at the time, these companies hadn't yet envisioned the

tremendous profitability of what has since become one of the fastest

growing sectors of the entire American economy - organic food

products.

 

State standards worked well in every state in which they were

established. There was only one real problem with this new system.

Because organic certification rules were slightly different from

state to state, organic food growers and producers had to be aware

of these variations in order to be able to market their products in

every state. In states without their own standards, an organic

product could be sold as such as long as it was certified by one of

the other states' certifiers. But in spite of this difficulty, the

organic industry grew rapidly; product choice kept expanding. The

system worked.

 

If everything was humming along so smoothly, then why did more than

200,000 Americans write letters to the USDA in 1997/98 begging them

to not allow GMOs, irradiation and toxic sludge as fertilizer on

organic farms? As with so many other tragic stories we could be

telling, this one also involves we the people handing our

sovereignty over to a bunch of corporations - only this time they

were organic food corporations with names like Cascadian Farm, Santa

Cruz Organics, Hain, Muir Glen, Little Bear, and many others. And

their owners had a similar goal to those of Monsanto's owners - ever

increasing sales and profits.

 

State-based organic food certification might have worked just fine

for an organics movement whose goals centered around public health

and a sustainable economy, and whose leadership continued to be

small-scale farmers and producers, and safe food advocates.

 

But unfortunately, the safe food movement's numerous and diverse

farmer-led and other organizations of the 1970s and 80s gradually

ceded organic food policy decision-making authority to a small

number of much more centralized organizations whose leaders (and/or

funders) now included or were entirely comprised of organic food

corporation representatives. And these corporate leaders had a

different set of goals.

 

So the sad reality is that we no longer have a strong and united

movement of grassroots citizens organizations working together to

create an organic food system for this country. Instead, we

primarily have a " national consumer watchdog group " (the Organic

Consumers Association, OCA) which defines its constituents as mere

consumers who yearn only for safe foods to vote for with their

dollars, and a business organization (the Organic Trade Association,

OTA) whose members include " growers, shippers, processors,

certifiers, farmer associations, brokers, manufacturers,

consultants, distributors and retailers " - in the US, Canada, and

Mexico - working primarily to protect and expand its profitability

in the global marketplace. And for this, we do need federal

organic standards.

 

Notice, by the way, the lack of attention to the concerns of farm

workers by either organization. They are invisible, though there are

hundreds of thousands of them.

 

To fully realize the danger of our current situation, you merely

have to view a list of the giant agribusiness corporations that are

clamoring to get in on the organic foods market action, which at the

current growth rate will constitute 10 percent of American

agriculture by the year 2010. These huge companies now own most of

the organic industry's leading brands.

 

* General Mills owns Muir Glen and Cascadian Farm

 

* Heinz owns Hain, Breadshop, Arrowhead Mills, Garden of Eatin', Farm

Foods, Imagine Rice (and Soy) Dream, Casbah, Health Valley, DeBoles,

Nile Spice, Celestial Seasonings, Westbrae, Westsoy, Little Bear,

Walnut Acres, Shari Ann's, Mountain Sun, and Millina's Finest

 

* M & M-Mars owns Seeds of Change

 

* Coca-Cola owns Odwalla

 

* Kellogg owns Kashi, Morningstar Farms, and Sunrise Organic

 

* Philip Morris/Kraft owns Boca Foods and Back to Nature

 

* Tyson owns Nature's Farm Organic

 

* ConAgra owns LightLife

 

* Danone owns Stonyfield Farm

 

* Dean owns White Wave Silk, Alta Dena, Horizon, and The Organic Cow

of Vermont

 

* Unilever owns Ben and Jerry's

 

And the list goes on and on and on.

 

And who (or what) leads the Organic Trade Association, which

continues to play a leading role in the development of organic food

legislation and policy-making? The board of directors includes

employees of Whole Foods Market, Weetabix Canada, Stonyfield Farm,

and Horizon companies. And the primary funding for the OTA's public

policy and media advocacy work comes from Hain Celestial Group (i.e.

Heinz Corp), Horizon Organic (i.e. Dean Corp), Cascadia Farm (i.e.

General Mills Corp), Stonyfield Farm (i.e. Danone Corp), Tyson

Foods, and many others.

 

Is the corporate leadership and funding of the OTA having an impact

on its ability to maintain organizational integrity? You bet! At its

annual convention in Texas, it hosted a panel discussion about

whether organic and biotech agriculture can co-exist. Perhaps a

better use of member time would have been a panel on the need for a

ban on genetically modified organisms in the food supply, and how to

achieve it. The fact that General Mills Corporation is a major donor

may have had something to do with this. And last July, the OTA's

Personal Care Task Force decided not to reappoint member company Dr.

Bronner's Magic Soaps, the largest seller of natural soap in the

U.S. According to several members, the company is being removed for

speaking out against watering down standards for body care products.

 

Has anyone asked those small-scale food producers who launched this

extraordinary organic foods movement back in the 1970's what they

think about their movement (if you can even honestly still call it a

movement) now being funded and led by a long list of giant

corporations? The very nature of the modern corporate capitalist

economy necessitates companies growing larger and larger in order to

compete. Is this really the business model that the organic foods

movement supports? In this democratic society, is this really the

best we can do?

 

At this point, one has to ask a number of perhaps not-so-obvious

questions: If we the people had never allowed our organic food

corporations to take control of our safe food movement's policy-

making processes (via such groups as the OTA and the National

Organic Standards Board), would we have lobbied to replace state-

based certification with federal USDA certification? And if we had

not turned this decision-making authority over to our corporations,

would more than 200,000 concerned citizens have had to write letters

to the USDA? Would we now be in the unenviable situation where we

are continually on the defensive against the USDA's ongoing attempts

to drive a tank through our new federal organics standards? Can

social movement processes survive when corporations (including ally

corporations) are given a political voice? Did it not occur to the

safe food movement's leadership that our corporations might one day

end up being owned by much larger agribusiness corporations that

still wanted a seat at our policy-making tables?

 

When citizens unconsciously delegate their rightful decision-making

authority to the corporate form of doing business, and when

corporations wield Bill of Rights protections as " corporate

persons, " how can we possibly maintain any semblance of control over

the key societal decisions which affect us all? How can we even

honestly claim that the U.S. is a democratic society when we the

people struggle to differentiate between a citizens' organization

responsive to its members and committed to a specific set of goals

relating to justice, fairness, or ecological sanity; and a trade

association whose primary goal is maximizing market share? What is

it going to take for the organic foods " movement " in this

country - what's left of it - to recognize the threat posed by

turning its decision-making authority over to organic foods

corporations which are themselves owned by much larger corporations?

 

The situation in other countries is less serious, since their safe

food advocacy groups are still led by citizens, not corporations.

For example, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture

Movements (IFOAM) represents 570 member organizations in more than

100 countries. Its mission is " Leading, uniting and assisting the

organic movement in its full diversity. " IFOAM is " a democratic

federation with all fundamental decisions taken at its general

assemblies, where its World Board is also elected. It encourages

farm workers to play an active role, which you'll never hear from

the OTA or OCA.

 

The US does still have hundreds of grassroots citizen groups working

on safe food issues. They are networked together through the National

Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (NCSA) which " is dedicated to

educating the public on the importance of a sustainable food and

agriculture system that is economically viable, environmentally

sound, socially just, and humane. " Constituencies represented

include " family farms, rural and urban communities, environmental

and wildlife advocates, faith-based institutions, minority farmers,

farmworker and social justice groups, community food security

activists, and advocates for the humane treatment of animals. "

 

Notice that this is not a consumer alliance. These hundreds of member

organizations are made up of people who define themselves as citizens

using democratic processes to further their goals. Some of these

groups include: Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development

Alliance, Comte de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agricolas--Farmworker

Support Committee, Community Nutrition Institute, Family Farm

Defenders, Georgia Poultry Justice Alliance, Maine Organic Farmers

and Gardeners Association, Missouri Farmers Union, National Catholic

Rural Life Conference, Oregon Tilth, Texas Organic Cotton Marketing

Cooperative, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society,

Western Organization of Resource Councils, and Women, Food and

Agriculture. The OCA and OTA are also members of this network.

 

Wouldn't you prefer your organic food legislation to be enshrined by

state legislatures, and safeguarded by hundreds of thousands of real

flesh-and-blood human beings who make up a strong interwoven national

network of grassroots organizations and small farms like the ones

mentioned above, rather than placing your trust in the hands (!?) of

corporate " persons " which have been empowered to lead an

international trade association, plus a federal agency corrupted by

agribusiness? It's a no-brainer!

 

Perhaps the time has come for organic food advocates to admit that a

huge strategic mistake has been made due to the fact that we have

wandered so far from our literal roots. And that the best solution

to this growing crisis is for thousands of us to stand together as

citizens (rather than isolated as consumers) and insist that our

organic food promoting organizations' leaders work with us to regain

control of our movement from corporations of all kinds from this day

forward by:

 

* Acknowledging our enormous mistake.

 

* Empowering only flesh-and-blood persons - not corporate persons -

to participate in our movement's own policy decision making groups.

(Let's show the nation how democratic decision making should be done

by disempowering the supposed " right " to free-speech that corporate

personhood has established under law, and which has so effectively

devastated we the people's ability to take charge.)

 

* Withdrawing our support for USDA-defined and regulated organics

standards, and returning to the old state standards. (If it ain't

broke, don't fix it!)

 

* Insisting that the US pull out of all global trade treaties and

processes which are not entirely transparent and democratic in their

decision making structures.

 

* Working diligently to see ourselves again primarily as citizens

who all have an inherent right to a safe food supply, rather than as

mere consumers who vote with our dollars. (Imagine organic food

advocates beginning to question the acceptability of a two-tier food

supply in this country, where those of us who can afford to do so

buy organic, and the rest of us eat irradiated and genetically

modified food dosed with toxic chemicals. Imagine hundreds of

grassroots groups working together to end this travesty.)

 

We have reached a critical moment in our nation's history. Are we up

to the task?

 

Paul Cienfuegos co-founded Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County,

and currently chairs the City of Arcata Committee on Democracy and

Corporations. He first chimed in on this topic in 1997 with his

published essay, " The USDA Organics Standards as a Symptom of

Corporate Rule " . Paul also owns an unusual online bookstore:

www.100fires.com . This essay will appear in an upcoming book on

dismantling corporate rule, which he is co-authoring with Betsy

Barnum, fellow of the Center for Prosperity in Minnesota. More info:

cienfuegos

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