Major GMO/industrial ag players have been welcomed into the US organics body
Below is an excerpt from an article laying bare the dangers facing organic standards in the US. It's well worth reading in full.
The article takes in the OTA's apparent betrayal of its members through its support of the DARK (Denying Americans the Right to Know) Act, a GMO so-called labelling law that paradoxically enables companies to avoid giving shoppers clear information about the GMO content of foods.
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Upset over policy differences and that major GMO/chemical companies are members of the Organic Trade Association, Nature’s Path quits the Organization as a protest to save organic
Max Goldberg
Living Maxwell, July 23, 2018
https://livingmaxwell.com/natures-path-resigns-from-ota-basf-cargill-gmo-companies
[links to sources at the URL above]
* Iconic cereal brand Nature’s Path has quit the Organic Trade Association (OTA) as a protest to save organic.
* The company says the OTA “is not working in step with organic advocates to protect and strengthen the original principles of the organic movement” and is not acting with sincerity when it comes to hydroponics, the most divisive issue in organic.
* BASF and Cargill have been granted membership in the OTA, even though their GMO and chemical products “are actively harming” organic farmers.
* The OTA defends its governance, transparency, and organic agenda.
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For some people, having BASF — one of the world’s most powerful chemical and GMO companies — as a member of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is not a problem.
For Arran Stephens, CEO and Co-Founder of the fiercely independent, family-owned Nature’s Path, this was something that he could no longer tolerate.
A combination of frustration with the OTA over the years, the organization’s willingness to accept hydroponics in organic, and allowing non-organic members, such as BASF, Cargill, Campbell’s, and General Mills, to have influence over the direction of the OTA were all reasons Nature’s Path cited as reasons why it recently left the trade group.
“Our departure from the OTA is an act of protest to raise awareness of our concern that the important role organic plays to support the health of consumers and our planet is being compromised,” says Arran Stephens.
A TURBULENT HISTORY WITH THE OTA
The decision to leave the Organic Trade Association was hardly an impetuous one, and Nature’s Path has been intimately involved with the organization for nearly two decades, often at odds with its policies and willingness to protect organic.
According to Nature’s Path, Arran Stephens had been on the OTA’s board of directors from 1996 to 2002 but quit primarily because the organization was not taking the threat of GMOs seriously enough. He expressed his concerns to the OTA board more than once, warning that “GMOs will become the greatest threat to the organic movement in the years ahead”.
“When I resigned from the board, I was becoming somewhat battle-fatigued and felt that I, and other rank and file OTA board members were being ignored by the executive committee. At the 2001 OTA meeting at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, one of the executive committee members, who was also the CEO of Cascadian Farms, stated that the OTA wouldn’t take a stand for or against GMOs. I whispered to my friend and industry activist, Ken McCormick, ‘I betcha anything, Cascadian is selling out.’ Sure enough, later that very morning, it was announced that Cascadian Farms had been acquired by General Mills,” said Arran Stephens.
Even though Arran Stephens left the board of directors, Nature’s Path remained a member of the OTA.
The company’s Organic Program Manager, Dag Falck, subsequently served on the OTA’s board of directors twice: from 2006-2009 (a full 3-year term) and from 2014-2016 (when he held a board seat as the Canadian Organic Trade Association (COTA) representative).
In 2016, GMO-labeling was the most prominent and politically sensitive topic in the entire organic industry. Vermont passed its own GMO-labeling bill, and many states were attempting to do the same. This prompted Congress to step in and pass a federal GMO-labeling bill that would override any state bill. Needless to say, this federal GMO-labeling bill, also known as the DARK Act, was incredibly flawed, and many constituents in the organic industry were deeply opposed to it.
The way in which the OTA handled the DARK Act caused Dag Falck to resign from the organization’s board in 2016.
“This was such an enormous issue that the entire membership should have been asked, but they weren’t. As a board member and a member of the executive committee, I was never asked to take a vote on the issue of OTA supporting the mandatory federal labeling of GMOs. Instead, the OTA President and the Executive Director made the decision on their own, and we found out after the fact,” said Dag Falck.
BASF AND THE MASSIVE CONTAMINATION DICAMBA HAS CAUSED TO U.S. FARMERS
Even though Monsanto gets almost all of the attention and backlash for its GMOs and super-toxic chemicals, it is by no means alone.
BASF, a German conglomerate with operations around the world, is a major player in GMO seeds and super-toxic chemicals as well.
One of its primary chemicals is a next-generation herbicide called dicamba. It is sprayed on genetically-engineered crops that are resistant to dicamba, but the volatile nature of this chemical has made it very prone to drift, which has resulted in millions of acres of damaged crops.
Despite the fact that dicamba has been linked to increased rates of cancer in farmers and birth defects, it is expected that tens of millions of acres will be sprayed with dicamba over the next few years. This will have catastrophic consequences for pollinators, insects that are vital to our food supply.
Here are more specifics about dicamba:
– In 2017, dicamba damaged approximately 3.6 million acres of soybean crops — crops not engineered to be resistant to this chemical — because of drift.
– The University of Missouri just reported that dicamba has caused approximately 1.1 million acres of damage to agricultural plants, trees and other crops so far in 2018. The number is lower than 2017 because of restrictions put into place by state agriculture departments.
– In March, the Center for Biological Diversity estimated that dicamba will be sprayed on more than 60 million acres of monarch habitat. Dicamba is extremely harmful to milkweed, the only food for monarch caterpillars. Monarch butterflies are very important pollinators, and their populations have already fallen by 80% in the past two decades due to escalating pesticide use and other human activities.
One state that has endured tremendous problems with dicamba is Arkansas. Tensions are so high that farmers are turning against each other, and one farmer was shot to death over a dicamba contamination dispute.
According to Shawn Peebles, an organic farmer in Arkansas and a member of the Arkansas Dicamba Task Force, “My organic edamame is extremely vulnerable, and I am very upset because not everyone who is supposed to stop spraying is doing so. There is a select group of farmers who just don’t care. Dicamba has wiped out entire counties, and we are watching our native vegetation die. When I called the USDA’s National Organic Program looking for help, I never got a call back. Why is the EPA allowing this? The whole situation is a mess. It’s infuriating.”
Richard Coy, a beekeeper and owner of Coy’s Honey Farm in Arkansas, claimed that he had to move his 3,000 hives to a different state because of dicamba. Soon, he said, “Everyone will be planting the exact same crop. It’s already a disaster.”
BASF WANTS TO USE ITS GENETICALLY-MODIFIED PRODUCT IN ORGANIC
Even though dicamba is not allowed to be sprayed on organic crops, BASF’s biopolymers division, a member of the Organic Trade Association, is attempting to get special approval for its biodegradable mulch from the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).
At the NOSB meeting in April in Tucson, Ruth Watts, a business development manager for BASF’s biopolymers division, acknowledged that “genetically modified organisms are used as a processing aid” in its bio-based mulch for which it is seeking approval. She claimed that the GMOs “do not survive the production process and are not in the final product, so they are not a farm input.” GMOs are illegal in organic production.
David Mortensen, PhD, Professor of Weed and Applied Plant Ecology at Penn State University, and a current NOSB board member, listened to Ruth Watts’ public testimony in Tucson and said to her, “I was driving back from Washington, D.C. last week when one of your colleagues called in. I was coming back from the dicamba drift discussion, a closed-door discussion, where I heard multiple organic farmers say that they’re on the verge of not being able to grow their crops because of dicamba drift, which is manufactured by BASF. I guess I’m trying to reconcile a corporate ethic that wants to sell a product for organic production on the one hand and is selling a product that’s being used on about 50 million acres of cropland on the other hand. Could you just help me see the corporate ethic where there’s consistency here?”
“I don’t even know what this product is that you’ve been talking about,” answered Ruth Watts, claiming that she had no idea what her company’s prominent chemical was.
“Just to be clear, dicamba is the herbicide. It will be used because Monsanto and BASF are working together to have 50 million acres treated this coming summer. It would be worth discussing,” said David Mortensen.
When asked to comment about BASF’s membership in the OTA, CEO/Executive Director Laura Batcha said, “BASF is a non-voting, business associate member because they don’t sell any organic products. They are looking to enter the organic market with a bio-based product that would meet NOSB standards. It is a product that would replace a lot of the plastic being used in organic.”
CARGILL IS AN ENORMOUS PLAYER IN GMOS AND FACTORY FARMING
Another member of the OTA that Nature’s Path took issue with is Cargill, a privately held company with 2018 revenues of $115 billion and probably the largest grain trader in the world, according to Food & Water Watch.
Food & Water Watch Policy Director Patty Lovera said, “Cargill is one of a handful of global players that are driving the factory farm model of food production. Cargill is also intimately involved in the production of cheap GMO soy that is one of the top feed sources for factory farmed livestock and fish. The cultivation of this soy is destroying parts of the Amazon where huge swathes of forest have been cleared to pave the way for GMO soy production. Cargill profits handsomely from this model that is highly damaging to the environment both here and abroad, and is a direct threat to more sustainable models of agriculture.”
Among its many agricultural activities, Cargill has just developed, in partnership with BASF, a genetically-engineered canola seed that can produce omega-3 long-chain fatty acids.
GMO canola contamination of organic farms has been very problematic all over the world, including in Australia and the U.S. In Canada, organic farmers have largely stopped growing organic canola because GMO contamination was so bad.
Along with being a global leader in the marketing and promotion of GMOs, Cargill also sells organic sunflower oil and organic soybean oil.
Defending Cargill’s membership in the OTA, Laura Batcha said, “Cargill has segregated supply chains for organic and is playing a role in innovation in the U.S. in organic commodities. Whether it is Cargill or others, if you are participating in the organic supply chain, we want you in the business because people learn by participating in the trade. It is good to bring people into the tent for the long haul of organic.”
“It is unconscionable that the OTA is allowing these companies into the organization. Not only do they not have the best interests of organic farmers in mind, but they are actively harming them,” said Linley Dixon, PhD and Associate Director for The Real Organic Project.
“I noticed that the OTA took on Cargill and BASF as members even though they produce or promote GMO technology and toxic pesticides. Furthermore, they are companies that have spent many millions of dollars fighting GMO-labeling, including, of course, other OTA members — General Mills, Kellogg, Smuckers, and others who fought and contributed to campaigns against GMO transparency. I registered a strong complaint about BASF’s OTA membership when I discovered it but never got a satisfactory response,” said Arran Stephens.
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