The USDA is taking steps to prevent fraud in organic ag. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
The Organic Trade Association applauded the USDA and the National Organic Program for the new “Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule.” Tom Chapman, CEO of the Organic Trade Association, says the new regulation will do a lot to detect organic fraud and protect the integrity of organic agriculture throughout the supply chain.
“When the standards were first published, they focused on controlling entities that touch the product, so farmers, processors who transform it or are mixing it, making them into finished goods, and anyone who’s labeling it,” he said. “That’s really where the standards focused. It didn’t focus on the folks who stored products, that maybe didn’t process it at all, or all the entities that handled the product on paper – they traded, they brokered them – and, as organic grew from $6 billion to $63 billion, supply chains got more complex, and those entities become much more prevalent, and there’s opportunities for them to switch around some paperwork and make something conventional look organic.”
He said while those fraudulent cases were rare, it was important to get a handle on the situation.
Listen to Sabrina Halvorson’s This Land Of Ours program here.
Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet News Hour and The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.