OCA

We have been partnering with the Organic Consumers Association, or OCA, to spread the good news about why we choose organic! Molly Frey recently met with Alexis Baden-Mayor from the OCA to discuss the history, present, and future of the organization. This episode of the Frey Vines podcast is available on your favorite podcast listening platforms. You can also listen and watch the episode on the Frey Wine YouTube Channel.

MOLLY FREY: Welcome to the 7th episode of Frey Vines, the podcast dedicated to telling the story of organic wine. In this episode, we’ll be shining a spotlight on one of our affiliates, the Organic Consumers Association.

ALEXIS BADEN-MAYOR:   I’m Alexis Baden-Mayor, and I’ve worked since 2005 for the Organic Consumers Association here in Washington, DC, as their political director. Organic Consumers Association started in the late 1990s, which makes us newcomers compared to the Freys. Ronnie Cummins and Rose Welch had worked together at the “Pure Food Campaign” with Andy Kimbrel, who ended up starting the Center for Food Safety.

 So they had been longtime food campaigners and the big thing going down in the late 1990s was how the new (semi-new, it was a 1990 law) Organic Foods Production Act — how that would get implemented at the federal level. And the Clinton administration had a guy in there called, his name was Islam Siddiqui, and he ended up working for Crop Life, for the pesticide companies, for Monsanto, and all of the worst.

And he was the agricultural marketing services director for Clinton. And he was throwing out all kinds of crazy things like, “Hmm, maybe we should allow sewage sludge,”  “maybe we should allow genetically modified organisms,” and it was a huge crisis at the time. And so, Ronnie and Rose, since they had been food campaigners working on the GMO issue, they really felt like organic needed a consumer campaign. There were certainly obviously certifiers and farmers in the mix, people who have been working like the Freys on the organic standard since the eighties and earlier. But Ronnie and Rose wanted to bring that activist lens to it. And so that’s how OCA got started in the campaign to save organic standards. And that has continued to be a core part of our work. We’re always watching and working against new and old pesticides, new and old, now, genetically modified organisms, factory farms. So we’re going out against the worst forms of industrial agriculture, but we’re always elevating the best forms of organic.