DALLAS - More and more shoppers are forking out extra money for organic foods to avoid chemicals, eat healthy and to support the environment.
But the USDA Organic label, stamped on everything from chocolate chip cookies to milk to mangos, may not be a mark the public always can trust.
Organic food is supposed to be free of most chemical pest killers, fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones, and genetic engineering. Organic farmers and ranchers must enrich the soil and be kind to animals; chickens should strut outside and cows should regularly graze.
But a Dallas Morning News investigation has found that the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out.
"The USDA has failed to enforce the regulations," said Jim Riddle, former chairman of the National Organics Standards Board and an appointed adviser to the USDA when the organic standards were enacted in 2002. "There have been no prosecutions of violations for the organic law yet. ... They've failed to take action."
Though a small slice of the overall food market, organics is growing at 16 percent a year, while overall food sales are rising only 3 percent. They are forecast to continue that pace as big grocers, most recently Wal-Mart, expand their organic offerings.
Barbara Robinson, the USDA executive who oversees the National Organic Program, said her small staff struggles to keep up with the booming industry.
"When you have eight or nine people and everybody wants something, you try to do a little bit of everything."
She said the label is as good as the people who are growing and monitoring the products.
"I don't think there are any absolutes in the world anywhere. I think that's kind of a ridiculous question," she said.
Robinson acknowledged that the agency hasn't fined anyone for misuse of the label, but she said certain products have been ordered to yank it.
Retailers say the label is their cue that products are authentic.
"If you buy an organic product at Wal-Mart, you can trust that it is USDA-certified. But I would not be able to speak to whether those are the right standards or the wrong standards. We are retailers; we are not agronomists or scientists," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Gail Lavielle.
The organic program monitors at least 20,000 organic growers, ranchers, processing plants and others worldwide.
Texas looms large in organics with more organic land than any other state. It is also home of one the nation's biggest organic companies, Dean Foods in Dallas, which distributes Horizon Organic dairy products and Silk soymilk. Whole Foods of Austin is the largest organic retail chain. Representatives from both companies say they take measures to make sure their products are organic.
USDA officials say the organics label is a selling point rather than a mark of nutrition. The dietary benefit of organics is the subject of dueling debate. However, shoppers often view organic food as an investment in their health.
About 66 percent of U.S. consumers buy organic products occasionally, according to a 2004 survey by the Hartman Group, a consumer research company. Almost half said they bought organic for their health and nutrition.
Those surveyed said having children was the most significant reason to go organic, and that's exactly what prompted 28-year-old Megan Stewart of The Colony, Texas.
Her 1-year-old daughter was recently strapped into a shopping cart filled with organic baby food in an aisle at Whole Foods in Plano, Texas.
"I only get the USDA-certified, rather than just packages that say all-natural or organic," Stewart said. "They are really under tight regulations."
But the Dallas Morning News found the following reasons that organic shoppers may not be buying what they think:
* A review of 216 internal USDA audits shows several examples of violations at organic farms and production plants. However, reports about problems that are supposed to filter up to the agency from on-the-ground monitors are incomplete.
* Much organic food is produced overseas where there is even less oversight. Inspectors in China, for example, describe obvious violations that are not well-tracked or known by the agency.
* Vague rules leave much to interpretation, especially when it comes to treatment of animals.
Organics is full of true believers, farmers and food processors who go above and beyond what they're required to do. But they worry about organic scofflaws making a bad name for the whole industry.
"There's definitely people who don't follow the rules," said Conner Updike, who grows organic beans and squash in central Florida. He uses chicken manure to fertilize his crops, but he has heard that some people cut corners and use ammonium nitrate -- a banned fertilizer -- that costs half as much and is hard to detect.
"It's not fair to me," he said. "I'm trying to obey all the rules and then someone else cheats."
The Washington State Department of Agriculture, for example, discovered a fruit farmer who applied banned chemicals to his orchard and a mint grower selling regular mint under the organic label.
A Canadian certifier cried foul when inspectors found chickens at a Manitoba poultry producer that had no access to the outdoors, as required in organic laws.
Among 268 complaints released by the USDA, about 50 were products erroneously claiming to be organic or falsely using the label. The USDA ordered them to stop.
Problems continue to crop up, but there's no way for the public to know how many cheaters there are.
The Dallas Morning News requested in April records of all violations regarding individual farms, ranches and handlers. USDA officials said they could not provide the documents for at least six months.
Officials said it would take that long to collect and organize the information, though organic program rules mandate the USDA make violation information available to the public on the program's Web site. But after four years, Robinson said her staff hasn't had time to make that happen.
The USDA does not know how many violations there are because it is missing information from those who are supposed to police the industry at the ground level.
The agency collects information from 56 certifiers in the United States and 40 in foreign countries, usually state-run agencies or private companies. Farms and processing plants can choose any USDA-approved certifier.
A banana from Ecuador or rice from southeast Texas can carry the USDA label only if a certifier has given approval. Certifiers hire inspectors to walk through fields, interview plant workers and comb through records. The certifiers are then supposed to notify the USDA when there are problems.
However, The Dallas Morning News reviewed hundreds of audits of certifiers that show many violations. Yet the USDA has never yanked or suspended a certifier's accreditation, despite auditors' recommendations to do so.
Auditors, from a separate USDA branch, wrote that certifiers approved food producers despite evidence that banned chemicals were used. Some gave approval without conducting inspections. USDA officials would not discuss the individual audits. It's unclear whether officials addressed problems auditors pointed out. But several audits note the same problems with the same certifiers year after year.
Inspectors, organic farmers and certifiers themselves say they know some cut corners.
Sam Welsch, owner of OneCert, a certification agency in Lincoln, Neb., said some companies hire the cheapest inspectors, not the most qualified.
"Even if one organization is doing a bad job, and a fraud issue would come up, that's bad for the whole industry," he said.
Big companies, such as Dean Foods, say they protect their consumers by going with reliable, trusted certifiers.
"A lot of certification agencies have been doing this for decades. I see a lot of integrity in the certifiers and think they really have been working hand-in-hand with the USDA," said Kelly Shea, vice president of organic stewardship for WhiteWave Foods, a Dean Foods subsidiary.
Shea said the industry would benefit if the USDA spent more money on enforcement.
Whole Foods took another route to assure customers, and is a certified organic retailer. This special status requires the chain to make sure labeled products have documents to back them up. Whole Foods also tracks food back to its producers, said Joe Dickson, organic programs coordinator for the company.
About 40 percent of organic farms and handlers are in foreign countries, including 300 farms and processing plants in China.
Wal-Mart used some Chinese organic soybeans in its private label soymilk. They've also been in Silk, the popular soymilk brand from WhiteWave.
The United States has 2.2 million organic acres; China has 8.6 million. Almost 90 percent was certified in 2004, which raises a red flag with Riddle, who said it's questionable that China could have transitioned farmland that quickly.
China has a history of dousing fields with chemicals.
Fred Gale, a senior USDA economist who has researched Chinese agriculture, said it was "almost impossible to grow truly organic food in China.
"The water everywhere is polluted, and the soil is contaminated from industry and mining, and the air is bad."
Despite concerns about China, Robinson said the USDA only is responsible for approving the certifiers and it is their job to check on Chinese farms or handlers.
The Organic Crop Improvement Association, a certifying agent in Lincoln, Neb., has given USDA Organic certificates to about 200 operations in China. Executive director Jeff See said his company has built trust with its producers since it started in China more than 12 years ago.
At Rizhao Huasai Foodstuffs Co., in China's Shandong province, sales official Cui Min said workers sometimes use a fertilizer mix that includes human waste on their crops. It's a common practice in China, but a clear violation of the USDA rules.
See, whose company certified Rizhao Huasai, said workers there signed an affidavit stating they follow the rules, including those regarding fertilizers.
Simply trusting the word of a farmer might not be fail-safe, said Gale, of the USDA.
In China "there have always been laws and regulations on the books, but you find a way around them," he said.
Mutsumi Sakuyoshi, a Japanese inspector who has checked Chinese soybean fields for many of the world's largest certifiers, said she confronted one farm's workers after finding an empty plastic bag of herbicide.
Workers told her wind must have blown it from a neighbor's field.
Another farmer gave her an affidavit stating the land under inspection hadn't been used for at least three years. Sakuyoshi found the government official who stamped it and questioned its accuracy.
"He said, `No. I don't know. I don't care. They just asked me to stamp it, so I stamped it,'" she said.
See said American farmers are more skeptical of Chinese organics because they're a competitive threat to domestic producers.
"I wouldn't say there's probably never any problem with what OCIA has going on in China, but we find problems all around the world, even in the U.S," he said.
Even when standards are upheld, there are concerns throughout the industry that rules are unclear.
One of many examples is a rule that livestock must have "access to pasture." It doesn't say how much, for how long, or how much of a cow's meal has to come from leisurely munching.
Big dairies, such as Aurora Organic Dairy and Horizon Organic, were criticized by activist groups for running "industrial-scale" feedlots, where they said cows rarely roamed on acres of dry, stubbly grass. Both companies insist their cows do graze and met the requirements.
The debate triggered boycotts, and led to a lengthy discussion during the Dean Foods shareholders meeting in Dallas in May.
The National Organic Standards Board stepped in, and offered more detail, including a provision that cows must be on pasture for at least 120 days each year. It's now up to the USDA whether to make the recommendation law. Representatives of both dairies said they support the precision.
Chris Grotegut is a farmer in the Texas panhandle who grows corn, wheat, soybeans and other organic crops used in products distributed nationally. He said enforcing clear rules is the only way to make consumers trust the organic label.
"That is a concern ... that credibility is maintained and people don't look at (organics) as a way to turn a conventional product into a fast buck to cheat the system."
COST OF ORGANIC
Consumers will sometimes pay twice as much for an organic product. Below are comparisons taken from local stores, including Tom Thumb, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart.
Product, Organic price, Regular price
Raisin bran, 29.3 cents per ounce, 16 cents per ounce
Chicken breast, $8.99 per pound, $4.99 per pound
Strawberries, $4.99 per pound, $2.99 per pound
Baby food, 21 cents per ounce, 14 cents per ounce
Milk, $3.50 per half-gallon, $2.47 per half-gallon
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Author: By Paula Lavigne, The Dallas Morning NewsDallas Morning News
