Federal subsidies to organic agriculture should be plowed under

This article originally appeared at Forbes and has been republished here with permission.

The House Committee on Appropriations is scheduled to meet today [July 12] to consider the full committee markup of the FY2018 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. We hope it will reflect a guiding principle articulated in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “if you’re going to propose cutting a program, you might as well try to eliminate it. The political pain is as great and if you succeed the payoff is greater.”

The budget proposed by the president would, in fact, zero out several programs at the Department of Agriculture, and we would suggest adding one more: the National Organic Program, which is rent-seeking pure and simple.

Subsidized to the tune of $160 million annually, it has more in common with Whole Foods’ marketing department than sound government. For example, the NOP is charged with “protecting the integrity of the USDA organic seal, from farm to market, around the world.” When it was established in 1990, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman emphasized the fundamental meaninglessness of the organic designation: “Let me be clear about one thing, the organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is ‘organic’ a value judgment about nutrition or quality.”

That is pretty clear, and worth repeating: The organic label is no more than a marketing tool. But it is a tool has been grossly abused. Organic agriculture’s dirty little secret is that it is an anachronism kept afloat only by massive subsidies, nurturing by a panoply of USDA programs, misleading advertising, and “black marketing” that dishonestly disparages the competition and the advocates of modern agricultural techniques.

Academics Review, a reliable, science-oriented nonprofit organization of academic experts, performed an extensive review of hundreds of published academic, industry, and government research reports concerned with consumers’ views of organic products. It also looked at more than 1,500 news reports, marketing materials, advocacy propaganda, speeches, etc., generated between 1988 and 2014 about organic foods. Their analysis found that “consumers have spent hundreds of billion dollars purchasing premium-priced organic food products based on false or misleading perceptions about comparative product food safety, nutrition and health attributes,” and that this is due to “a widespread organic and natural products industry pattern of research-informed and intentionally-deceptive marketing and paid advocacy.”

The deception and dishonesty don’t stop there. It is hardly news that some industries systematically lie and cheat to further their interests—who can forget the decades of mendacity from the tobacco industry—but the organic industry’s nefarious actions are actively aided, defended and supported by USDA’s Organic Seal and the National Organic Standards Program (NOSP), in clear violation of the NOSP’s mission. American taxpayers are funding propaganda about organic products that misleads consumers with fraudulent health, safety and quality claims, and fools them into supporting production methods that are an affront to the environment.

Organic agriculture has morphed into a massive special-interest bonanza. Sales of organic food in the United States now exceed $40 billion. Federal spending on organic agriculture mushroomed from $20 million in the 2002 Farm Act to more than $160 million in the 2014 Farm Act. And according to the USDA, “Under the Obama administration, USDA has signed five major organic trade arrangements and has helped organic stakeholders access programs that support conservation, provide access to loans and grants, fund organic research and education and mitigate pest emergencies.”

The definition of “organic” continues to be a moveable feast while the government and organic industry constantly tweak its meaning; it is completely arbitrary, after all, with no scientific basis: The National Organic Standards Board often deems new products and practices acceptable after appeals by organic farmers because their yields are failing.

Organic boosterism at the federal level is not without consequences. Consumers have been snookered into believing organic food is healthier, safer or better for the environment than non-organic options when it is not. Because prices for organic food are much higher, those misconceptions eat away at the buying power of the average consumer.

Perhaps most ironic given the organic industry’s holier-than-thou aura is the fact that much of what is sold as organic isn’t.

In two articles in May, the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey exposed the dubiousness of the organic label and the alarming trend of fraudulent organic grains being imported here. For his May 1 article, “Why your ‘organic’ milk may not be organic,” Whoriskey tracked a few milk producers to see whether they followed the Department of Agriculture’s strict but weakly enforced guidelines for organic certification. Organic milk can cost twice as much as conventional milk, and, as Whoriskey observed, “if organic farms violate organic rules, consumers are being misled and overcharged.”

The Post surveilled Aurora Organic Dairy—a major milk supplier for house organic brands sold by retailers such as Walmart and Costco—and found that the company appeared to violate rules about how often the cows were grass-fed, a key differential between conventional and organic milk production. The Post had several organic milk samples tested to measure for two fats that are more prevalent in organic milk (although in amounts inconsequential to human health), and most fell short.

 

Whoriskey says that the integrity of the organic label rests on “an unusual system of inspections” that the head of the USDA’s organic program calls “fairly unique.” Organic producers pay a private inspector, approved by the USDA, to certify their products as organic; the agency checks in on those inspectors every few years. The USDA has only 82 certified inspection firms to supervise a massive organic supply chain of more than 31,000 farms and businesses worldwide. This leaves plenty of room for error and outright cheating and fosters a pay-to-play climate that benefits producers and inspectors at the expense of unwitting consumers.

The burgeoning organic market has also created a huge demand for imports in the United States. (We are a net importer of organic goods; so much for “locally grown.”) Most alarming is the importation of supposedly organic grains to be used as animal feed, from Ukraine, Turkey, India, and China, countries with dubious food-safety standards and enforcement.

Any organic meat or animal by-product, such as milk or eggs, must be sourced from animals fed organic-only grains. Since nearly all the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. are from genetically engineered seeds—and therefore forbidden under federal organic standards—the organic versions of those grains are now being shipped here from around the world. In 2016, the United States imported $160 million in organic yellow corn, a 400 percent increase just since 2014, and $250 million in organic soybeans, a 75 percent increase in two years.

But the Post’s investigation shed doubts on the authenticity of these imported “organic” grains. In his May 12 bombshell article, Whoriskey reveals how 36 million pounds of soybeans from Ukraine, shipped through Turkey to California last year, “underwent a remarkable transformation” from conventional to organic. The fraud increased the value of the beans by $4 million, since organic grains sell for more than non-organic. Whoriskey found that at least 21 million pounds of the phony organic soybeans have already entered the food supply—a potential food-safety threat, since it’s unknown how these grains were grown and handled.

The Post reported on two other fraudulent shipments of organic grains in the past year that “were large enough to constitute a meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those commodities. All three were presented as organic, despite evidence to the contrary.”

Organic marketers regularly con consumers into believing all sorts of things that aren’t true–for example, that organic growers don’t use pesticides (they do) and that organic foods are more healthful (they’re not). Their fear-mongering and trashing the competition influences shoppers, especially those with lower incomes, in an unconstructive way: A recent study published in Nutrition Today indicated that “limited access and availability of organic produce in low-income communities could discourage purchase of any [fruits and vegetables] when organic is not available.”

There’s a third partner in this systematic ripoff of unsuspecting American consumers: the liberal media. Lawyer and agriculture writer Amanda Zaluckyj has referred to the “unholy alliance” of the media, federal government and Big Organic, as illustrated by National Public Radio’s live broadcast of the March 9 fundraising dinner for The Organic Center. There we had the spectre of federally-funded NPR broadcasting a benefit for the lobbying arm of the federally-funded, venal $43 billion organic industry. (The details are for another day, but far worse is the continual anti-genetic engineering agit-prop on NPR-broadcasted programs such as Living on Earth, The DNA Files and The Diane Rehm Show.)

The Trump Administration and the Congress need to get American taxpayers out of the business of promoting culinary snake-oil.

Julie Kelly is a food writer and National Review Online contributor. Follow her on Twitter at @julie_kelly2.

Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller.