Alerts of the Week Organic Standards Alert
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Beer
When is organic beer not really organic? Nearly always – and the situation may quickly get worse. The issue is hops, one of the central ingredients in beer. It’s a little-known fact that "certified organic" beer can be brewed with non-organic hops, owing to a USDA ruling made in 2007, despite the objections of thousands of OCA members.
That ruling is currently up for review by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), but one of their committees has voted unanimously to continue it, and their recommendation is likely to stand unless consumers and organic advocates make their voices heard during the public comment period that runs through October 12, or in person at the USDA hearings in Madison, Wisconsin October 25-27. The Organic Consumers Association will be testifying in support of requiring organic hops. We need as many of our members to join us as possible.
Eggs
The Cornucopia Institute, OCA’s close ally, has put together a comprehensive report called Scrambled Eggs, exposing the deplorable practices that constitute "business as usual" in industrial-scale organic egg production. The report is the culmination of two years of research which saw the group visit over 15% of the certified egg farms in the United States, and survey all name-brand and private-label industry marketers. Cornucopia’s findings demonstrate the huge gap between best-practice animal husbandry exhibited by many small and medium-sized organic egg producers, and the bare-minimum standards followed by many industrial-scale operations.
Wine
Recently, long-established USDA organic wine standards have come under attack. A group made up of foreign and domestic wine producers and distributors seeks to change current established US organic wine standards to allow a synthetic preservative called sulfite, a known allergen, to be added to organic wine.