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Winter 1995
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Organic Food Production Act
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cooperating organizations, producer pools and direct-marketing farmers.
The result has been good for the environment (and the Great Lakes) and has provided
incentive for conventional farmers to "convert" to alternative systems to get
higher prices while suffering less water contamination of the farmstead and surrounding
areas.8
Unfortunately, much of the "alternative community has been beset
by a lack of meaningful and uniform standards, a rash of opportunism bordering on fraud in
some cases and little to no support from land grant universities. Responding to this
dilemma, Congress in 1990 passed the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA)9, an elegant and novel piece of legislation. The OFPA promised to
protect consumers and to encourage more ecologically sound agricultral practices that
could begin to reverse the agricultural impact on the Great Lakes and all other precious
water reserves in the nation.10
Sadly, almost five years later, regulations under
the OFPA have yet to be promulgated, and now an even larger sea of counterfeit and
pseudo-organic products exists in the marketplace. Consumers continue to be unsure what
"certified organic" means, and many natural/health food retailers continue to
use whatever hype they can think up to sell non-organic food as organic.11 In addition, true organic farmers—who have eliminated any
use of synthetic and non-organically derived materials in their
production systems—must compete with those whose state standards or certification
See. E.g.,Margo Brett Baender,Pesticides
and Precaution: The Bamako Convention as a Model for an International Convention on
Pesticides Regulation, 24 N.Y.U.J. INT’L L. & POL 557 (1991)(Consumer
interest in chemical-free produce has provided an incentive for many farmers to switch to
alternative agriculture."). The only crop that has not suffered from overproduction
is perhaps maple syrup.
Organic Food Production Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-624,
Stat. 3359 (codified at 7 U.S.C. § 6501 (1990)).
See 7 U.S.C. § 6501 (1988 & Supp. V 1993).
Section 6501 provides the purposes of the act:
- to establish national standards governing the marketing of certain agricultural products
as organically produced products:
- to assure consumers that organically produced products meet a consistent standard; and
- to facilitate interstate commerce in fresh and processed food that is organically
produced.
Id.
See, e.g., Christopher Shirley, Rules to Grow By, NEW FARM,
Sept./Oct. 1991, at 31, 33 (citing the OFPA as the first federal effort to control the
food handlers); Michael Traupman, Congress Eyes National Organic Law, NEW FARM,
Feb. 1990, at 40 (discussing the need for labeling that distinguishes between phony
organic growing and true organic production). See also John M. Church, A Market
Solution to Green Marketing: Some Lessons From the Economics of Information, 79 MINN.
L. REV. 245, 246 (1994) ("The inherent conflict is clear: Consumers will buy
environmentally beneficial products to induce greater corporate responsibility, yet
manufacturers, striving for the greater profits, may have incentive to inflate, or even
lie about the environmental attributes of their products.") Joanna L. Watman, Whose
Grass is Greener? Green Marketing: Toward a Uniform Approach for Responsible Environmental
Advertising, 3 FORDHAM ENVTL. L. REP. 163 (1992) (treating environmental marketing and
the deceptive, trivial and confusing claims made by companies).
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