ORGANIC FOODS
Grown from Good Intentions: the USDA and The Organic Foods Market By ERIC SEEGER
“K
now where your food comes from.” That’s the mantra among today’s foodies. Consumers want assurance that when they buy something labeled “healthy” or “organic,” it lives up to the label. And for some savvy buyers at markets in the Charlotte, N.C., area, they know exactly where their beef comes from. In fact, they can look a farmer in the eye with every purchase. A few years ago, Shelley Eagan and her husband, Brian, moved from Colorado to Kings Mountain, N.C., to help run her parents’ cattle farm. It takes two generations – working side by side – to maintain the Proffitt Family Cattle Company’s approximately 200- to 250-head herd. Steve Proffitt, Eagan’s father, handles the cows and the fields with the young couple’s help. The cows are 100 percent grass-fed and are regularly rotated to graze in different parts of the organic pastures. The cows have been certified organic by a USDA-accredited consultant from nearby Clemson University. “The process of getting certified is a lengthy one,” said Eagan. “For a cow on our farm to be certified organic, the pasture alone has to be certified organic – which means no chemicals, no herbicides can be used – for three years before that cow’s mother ever sets foot onto that field.” To complicate matters even further, the mother cow cannot have eaten anything but certified organic grass and feed beyond her second trimester for the calf to qualify as organic. And that’s just where the rules for certified organic beef begin. Beyond birth and field conditions, the USDA has laid down rules about pasturing, penning, hormones, antibiotics, living conditions, slaughter, processing, labeling, and distribution – literally from birth to the shopping cart.
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AMERICAN AGRICULTURE
The requirements might seem extreme considering this is only beef. The certified organic label is applied to a wide variety of livestock products, including poultry, pork, eggs, dairy, rabbits, and more. But for farmers, especially small-farm operators, and their customers, ensuring that their products are of the highest quality is worth the work. “We have clients from all around Charlotte who come to only us to buy beef,” said Eagan. As her farm and others get certified as organic, it’s up to the USDA to create a workable plan for staying on top of organic farming trends, keep certification relevant, enforce the standards required to have the USDA Organic seal, and make sure the public understands what they’re buying. Looking Back
While “organic” has been a hotly debated term among consumers and producers over the past decade, the USDA has been in the business of defining and refining the term for more than 20 years. It all got started in 1990 when the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) was passed as part of that year’s Farm Bill. That act, put into motion by Congress, charged the USDA with setting the bar for the production, processing, and labeling of foods that could be called organic – or as the USDA describes it more concisely, “to assure consumers that agricultural products marketed as organic meet consistent, uniform standards.” Like every self-respecting piece of legislation, the OFPA spawned two more acronyms. The NOP (National Organic Program) and the NOSB (National Organic Standards Board) are entities well-known by organic farmers and