Opinion: Organic food's rotten deal

A sleazy political favor for one farmer undermines the credibility of USDA food labels and endangers the integrity of the $10-billion organic food industry.

Few members of Congress knew what they were voting on late Thursday when they passed a $397-billion spending bill that ran to 3,000 pages. Now, the special interest projects are coming to light, such as the millions to be spent promoting the cowgirl, rock 'n' roll and baseball halls of fame, studying beavers and shiitake mushrooms and bailing out loggers and Texas dairy farmers, to name a few.

One of the sleaziest details, however, is a single paragraph slipped into the bill that will aid a single Georgia chicken farmer but threaten the integrity of the entire $10-billion organic food industry.

"After years and years and years of work, to have someone sneak it in in the dark of night and wipe it out makes no sense," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who labored for 12 years to develop the organic label. "It's a poke in the eye of a lot of very hard-working organic farmers."

Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., had tried before to undermine the rules that determine when poultry products can be advertised as organic. (The USDA organic label on meat means the animals were raised on food grown without pesticides, synthetic fertilizers or sewage sludge and not injected with hormones or antibiotics.) Last year, Deal tried to get the Agriculture Department to make an exception for Georgia's Fieldale Farms, allowing it to use conventional feed and still slap the organic label on its product.

That effort failed when others in the organic industry protested. So Deal -- who received $4,000 in campaign contributions from Fieldale employees in the last election -- turned to secrecy. Without public notification or discussion, he persuaded House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to insert a paragraph in the spending bill that will allow Fieldale Farms and other livestock producers to label their product organic even though it was raised on conventional feed, meaning it could have residues from pesticides, fertilizer and sludge. All the farmers would have to do is claim that available organic feed costs twice as much as conventional feed.

Of course, organic meat is priced higher than nonorganic because of the more costly methods of raising the animals. Under the new rule, Fieldale Farms could label its chicken organic and fetch a higher price without going to the expense of using organic methods to raise its chickens. The losers would be consumers and the organic food industry.

Organic meat production is the fastest growing segment of agriculture and helps American farmers export their products overseas. That entire market could be lost. Major poultry producers, such as Tyson Foods, warn that the new rule will "compromise the integrity of the organic standards," said Tyson spokesman Ed Nicholson.

Sen. Leahy said he will file a bill to repeal the new rule as soon as Congress returns to work. The Republican leadership in the House should be ashamed that they helped one self-serving member threaten an entire industry. They should support Leahy in his effort, and quickly return credibility to the organic label standards.

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