The USDA organic label is probably the most trusted brand of its kind. The organic label has seen steady growth since 1990 when Congress passed the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA).
The US Department of Agriculture reports that this year it started with 45,578 organic businesses globally, with 62 percent, or 28,454 of those establishments, in the United States. USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) serves the organic market in the US, which has sales of $ 55.2 billion as of 2019.
The USDA Organic Compliance and Monitoring Update for 2021 is the source for those figures and much more.
The NOP has enjoyed increased staff and funding, employing 63 people, with more than half of its people assigned to the Accreditation Division or the Compliance and Enforcement Division.
The annual report, published for only the fourth time, includes:
- National and foreign investigations and enforcement actions.
- Report on the inter-institutional coordination of compliance with organic trade
- Report on the coercive measures adopted on organic imports.
Since its report in February 2020, more than 750 complaints and inquiries have been directed to NOP. The so-called “educational information” solved 40 percent of those queries. The NOP investigated the remaining 60 percent.
Voluntary compliance agreements resolved most cases without the need to find a violation. Examples of voluntary compliance include instances where a non-certified farm or business becomes certified, or a certified farm or business corrects a non-compliance issue. Sometimes there is a reputable company in the organic market.
A year ago, the NOP established an online complaint portal and now receives about 75 percent of its complaints through that site. In 2020, it collected 390 complaints and 63 percent were for organic claims made by non-certified operations.
Complaints about prohibited practices, pesticides, mislabeling and fraud made up the rest.
“When the NOP has the evidence to support enforcement actions, investigators use a variety of tools to impose civil penalties, establish conciliation agreements and, in appropriate cases, refer bad actors for a criminal investigation,” says the annual report.
The California State Organic Program and the legal structures of the European Union are also relied upon to enforce global organic standards.
During 2020, the NOP resolved 448 cases, with 47 percent resolved through voluntary compliance,
Investigations found that another 22 percent had no organic violations.
The NOP took administrative action against the 14 percent. Ten percent are under investigation. Another 3 percent were in civil settlements or penalties, and 1 percent were in criminal proceedings.
The NOP credits the additional staff with being able to “scale a variety of compliance actions to resolve older complaints more quickly.” Evidence-backed staff investigations are enabling greater use of civil citations and penalties.
The intensified enforcement is also credited for the loss of certification of 679 operations in 45 countries through suspension or revocation. By country, the first with operations suspended or revoked in 2020 were:
- United States, 370
- Mexico, 51
- Tunisia, 51
- Ecuador, 35
- Chile, 27
- China, 24
- Turkey, 21
- Peru, 20
- Indonesia, 10
The NOP notes that domestic farms and businesses are not suspended or revoked at a higher rate than international operations; it’s just that the United States has the largest number of USDA-certified organic operations with 62 percent of the world’s total.
Fertilizer contaminated with banned pesticides, the sale of non-organic grains as organic, and an organic compliance investigation involving livestock are among the NOP’s top investigations. For example, a South Dakota man charged in a grain fraud case involving $ 75 million is currently awaiting sentencing. Five men in Missouri are currently in prison for grain fraud and a sixth guilty plea is pending.
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