In November 2021, a New Yorker article described how a major grain trader got away with passing off non-organic corn and soybeans as “organic” for years, making millions in the process. (Read it here.)
What’s striking about that story is how easy it was, how porous the certification system was, and how uninterested USDA regulators were in preventing organic food fraud.
Maybe that’s finally going to change. “The Agriculture Department on Thursday issued new requirements for foods labeled organic, a move aimed at cracking down on fraud and boosting oversight,” ABC News reported on Friday, January 20, 2023 (read that story here), and goes on to describe the rule changes, noting the Organic Trade Association had lobbied for them.
NBC Nightly News ran a segment on the “crackdown,” which you can watch in the video below.
Business defenders often think of government regulation as oppressive and overbearing. Against that backdrop, it’s strange that business interests (in this case, organic farmers) had to press the government to regulate their industry more. There have long been suspicions that “organic” may not always be organic. And for a long time, USDA’s regulators didn’t seem to care. Will that finally change?