OCA AND OTHERS ORGANIZING TO STOP BODY CARE LABELING FRAUD


Despite an avalanche of new body care products routinely mislabeled
as "USDA Certified Organic," and a formal legal complaint
filed by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) last February, the
USDA National Organic Program is still not monitoring or policing organic
label claims on body care products. This lack of enforcement undermines
organic integrity, penalizes legitimate organic body care companies
such as Dr. Bronner’s,
Dr. Hauschka’s
and Terressentials,
and sows confusion and fraud in the marketplace. To put an end to this,
the OCA has joined a new collaborative process, whereby objective and
science-based standards for organic body care products will be hammered
out by a broad task force composed of the OCA, natural and organic body
care companies, scientists, and other consumer representatives. These
standards will then be published by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) for organic certifiers to use in assessing the legitimacy of organic
label claims on body care products. A similar NSF standardization process
has been successfully implemented in the past few years on products
ranging from bottled water to vitamin supplements. Share
your thoughts about the direction of organic body care labeling in OCA’s
new web forum!