An organic industry watchdog group is calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to protect organic farmers and food from corrupt practices allowed by previous administrations.
In a letter to Kennedy, Organic Eye asked Kennedy to “actively intervene to save the true meaning of the organic label,” and offered to collaborate with him on that process.
As the organic industry has expanded over the last two decades, Organic Eye Executive Director Mark Kastel said major agro-industry players have come to dominate the industry, drowning out the voices of the family farmers who started it.
Agro-industry has successfully lobbied the USDA to allow practices — like hydroponic vegetable production and industrial meat, egg and milk production — to be certified as “organic” even though they don’t meet the original intent of the Organic Foods Production Act Congress passed in 1990, which established organics as an alternative to industrial farming, he said.
Hellbound and Down 