Street Roots • March 30-April 5, 2018
News
Page 7
WHAT THE GLUCK, USDA?
Oregon groups sue the Trump administration for dropping
a regulation that would have bolstered organic-labeling
BY EMILY GREEN
S E N IO R S T A F F R E P O R T E R
ttorneys at the Center for Food Safety’s
Portland office have taken the lead in
a lawsuit filed against the U.S.
Department of Agriculture in
California’s Northern District.
Plaintiffs in the case, which
include the nonprofit Cultivate
Oregon and two other West Coast
food safety groups, allege the
USDA violated laws governing its
own policy processes when on
March 13 it withdrew a previously
approved animal welfare rule.
The rule would have addressed
inconsistencies in the living conditions of
animals raised under the organic label by
banning de-beaking and several other
physical alterations, adding new health
care provisions, requiring that
certified-organic poultry and egg
producers provide their birds with
real access to the outdoors, and it
also would have placed limits on
p o u ltry overcrowding.
Most organic egg and poultry
producers already follow the
standards in the rule, and were
widely in support of its implementation.
That’s because without laws to level the
playing field, producers who follow higher
standards for animal welfare are being undercut
by a handful of high-volume organic producers
who do not, said Amy van Saun, Center for Food
Safety attorney.
“That was the huge problem being solved by
these rules, and one that apparently the Trump
administration does not care about,” she said.
The Center for Food Safety is a national
nonprofit organization based in Washington,
D.C.
Amy Wong, attorney and director at Cultivate
Oregon, said many organic egg producers in
Oregon are doing the right thing, but without
implementation of the new rule, they will only
see the chasm between their costs and the costs
of producers with lower standards deepen.
“Those brands that are able to do the lesser-
quality organic under this rule are still going to
be able to produce even cheaper eggs, and those
people who are still doing the right thing, it s
going to get more expensive for them,” she said.
After 10 years of going through all the
required public-comment periods and processes
required for new organic-label rules, the animal
welfare rule was approved the day before the
Trump administration took office. But following
the president’s executive order freezing all new
regulations, implementation of the rule was
delayed three times before the USDA officially
withdrew it.
The USDA claims it had to withdraw the rule
because “based on its current interpretation” of
statute, it does not have the authority to
implement it.
Van Saun said the agency’s new interpretation
A
ONLINE
of its role is a
Read Street Roots’ previous
coverage about how legal
battles behind the USDA
Organic label are defining
what it takes to be certified:
news.streetroots.org/
USDAorganic
“180-degree
reversal” of its
interpretation over
the past 28 years of
organic labeling as a
national standard.
“The language in the statute, we
think, is very clear in giving the USDA
authority, and in fact even requiring it to
make additional standards for the raising and
care of livestock,” she said.
The effects of the USDA’s new interpretation
of the statute could be far-reaching. The agency
has already implemented animal welfare rules
related to ruminant animals, such as requiring
organic dairy cows have access to pasture.
However, this new interpretation could pave the
way for those rules to also be rescinded.
“They made it clear that this interpretation
threatens not just the poultry rule that was just
passed, but also rules that have been in place for
years that everyone has been relying on,” van
Suan said. “It really threatens to gut organic.”
The USDA received more than 72,000
comments relating to the withdrawal of the new
rule, according to a tally on regulations.gov. Van
Saun said that only about 50 of those comments
were in support.
Ignoring tens of thousands of comments
among stakeholders, farmers and consumers in
organic policy-making is unusual, as it’s a
voluntary program with regulations based on
consensus, van Saun said.
Oregon has the second-highest percentage of
consumers who purchase organic products in
the U.S., according to the Organic Trade
Association, with 91 percent of Oregonian
households buying organic.
Under the guidance of Sonny Perdue, who is
also named in the March 21 lawsuit, the USDA
claimed another reason for the rule withdrawal
was because it would be too costly to producers.
However, as the lawsuit points out, this rationale
goes against the agency’s own prior economic
IL L U S T R A T IO N B Y E M IL Y G R E E N
analysis, which found costs would be minimal.
A Cornucopia Institute investigation found
that Cal-Maine and Herbruck’s Poultry were
among the largest egg producers to oppose the
new animal welfare rules. Both of these
companies sell eggs under several brands,
including Eggland’s Best. They also sell eggs to
store-brand organic labels such as Safeway (0
Organics), Kroger (Fred Meyer’s Simple Truth
Organic) and Trader Joe’s.
When people think organic, “they don’t think
of animals that are confined indoors,” van Saun
said, adding that the new rule is needed to close
the gap between what people think of as organic
and what the label actually requires.
Connie Karr, the certification director at
Oregon Tilth, told Street Roots in an interview
last summer that her organization was strongly
supportive of the new animal welfare standards
and that most operations in Oregon are already
following the new guidelines.
Oregon Tilth is the third-largest organic
certifier in the U.S., and it certifies organic
growers across the nation and advocates on their
behalf. Karr said that in Oregon, while there are
some mid-sized to large producers, the majority
are “the smaller, family-sized farms.”
According to the most recently available
USDA census data from 2014, Oregon was home
to 7,700 live organic chickens and turkeys and
more than 45,000 live organic dairy cows, beef
cattle and calves.
emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites