Refusing to Wait for the USDA, Texas Attorney General Defends the Organic Label on His Own

Last month, a state attorney general took enforcement into his own hands, exposing a loophole the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) failed to address.

In a landmark settlement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stopped Albertsons and its subsidiary chains from secretly misting USDA certified organic produce with a synthetic pesticide — ProduceMaxx, an EPA-registered antimicrobial pesticide whose active ingredient is hypochlorous acid.

Under NOP rules, chlorine materials are permitted in organic handling, but any use in direct food contact must be followed by a potable water rinse that brings residual chlorine to or below the Safe Drinking Water Act’s limit of 4 parts per million. ProduceMaxx is sold as a 6,000 ppm concentrate; even at its label-directed misting range of 30 to 60 ppm, that is roughly 8 to 15 times the organic limit — and the required rinse cannot be performed on a live retail display.

According to the AG’s findings, Albertsons was misting the chemical on the retail floor with no clear-water rinse — a practice that strips the organic status from the produce on the shelf. Albertsons signed the agreement without admitting wrongdoing.

What makes the case critical is not just what Albertsons did but the regulatory loophole that allowed it to happen.