The organic farming movement started as a values-based industry. It was built on a collaborative relationship between family-scale farmers and shoppers willing to pay for food produced based on superior environmental stewardship, humane animal husbandry, and economic-justice for the people who produce our food.
OrganicEye
In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) to establish national standards for livestock and crops to facilitate domestic marketing of organically produced fresh and processed food, and assure consumers that those products meet consistent, uniform standards. USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), authorized under OFPA, was created to implement the legislation.
Unending manipulation by industrial farming and food processing to control markets and a government driven by special interests seeking to distort the history and meaning of organic is now promoting new and “improved” rules that could permanently codify dangerous and unhealthy living conditions for laying hens and broilers. We need to make sure they don’t succeed. Our survival is dependent on good land stewardship, respectful animal husbandry, and continued delivery of good local and regional food.
Where would you like your chicken to come from? Here?
We have an Organic Industry Watchdog to help us keep an eye on the fox in the hen house! Mark Kastel and Will Fantle co-founded The Cornucopia Institute, a national organic food and farming watchdog, in 2004. In 2019, the partners launched OrganicEye to ensure the original values of the organic farming movement are not compromised in today’s industrial, chemical-based food system. In early 2022, Kastel and Fantle were joined by Jim Gerritsen, a Maine farmer, and Bill Heart, a Wisconsin conservationist.
Recently, Mark Kastel lead a virtual press conference describing the proposed changes to the National Organic Program rules and discusses why these rules will weaken rather than strengthen the program while reducing the competitiveness of small family organic farms. Watch here.
To stay on top of threats and machinations to weaken organic regulations to the benefit of large industrial organic food producers and processors, sign up for the OrganicEye newsletter, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Other stories from OrganicEye: