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Organic livestock feed may be new scandal

To your humble writer organic food production is the gift that just keeps on giving. New scandals and fraud involving organic...

To your humble writer organic food production is the gift that just keeps on giving. New scandals and fraud involving organic food production just keep flaring up as juicy topics for columns. Much has already been written about the lax and duplicitous inspection services carried out by for-profit organic certification companies.

The determination of the organic industry to resist any sort of mandatory testing program has brought much disrepute to the integrity of the overall business. All of this has brought to light a credibility situation that more and more consumers are starting to think about before they buy organic labelled food products. One might assume that this growing attitude of skepticism is sinking into the brain trust that governs the organic industry.

One presumes they might take steps to police some of the more obvious fraud but it would seem recent news on organic livestock feed imports just adds to the dubious reputation of so-called organic standards.

It may seem like the old "coals to Newcastle" story but readers may be amazed that thousands of tons of corn, soybeans and other such feedstuff are being imported into Canada and the USA every year – and imports are growing. Those imports may seem odd considering that North America is a net exporter of hundreds of millions of tons of such livestock feed. But there is a difference - the imported corn and soybeans are supposedly "organic" and such labelled feed is seemingly not available in quantity on this continent.

Those "organic" feed products are bought by dairy, poultry and egg operations that produce organic food products. Under organic livestock production standards the feed they use must be from organic sources – that is pesticide-free and non-GE plants. The fact that it is not possible to scientifically determine whether food products from such fed animals contain those prohibited ingredients is another inconvenient truth.

One might presume that if there was a demand for organic feed grains and oilseeds, producers would oblige and grow those feedstuffs. But to become a certified organic grower on this continent involves a multi-year process and the use of traditional tillage practices with the subsequent 20 per cent loss of crop yield. There is also the matter of a steady and reliable premium market for those organic grains and oilseeds. That's where the process falls down and many who might want to grow for this niche market would rather stick with the regular commercial product where yields, costs, prices and marketing are more predictable. Organic industry boosters like to crow that growers earn five times more per ton of organic grain than for conventional grain. They neglect to mention that the actual market is small and fragile and can easily be oversupplied by cheap so-called organic imports.

Those nefarious organic corn and soybean imports in question come from India, China, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria and other such bastions of supposed incorruptibility. Those source countries do not seem to have even a rudimentary organic production inspection protocol – except in theory. It seems the buyers of imported feed are happy to believe that if growers in those countries say it's organic it must be true.

The driving factor is that those alleged organic livestock feeds are much cheaper than the same certified organic feeds grown in North America. Being that the organic industry does not require any mandatory testing of organic imports one can see that the opportunity for fraud and deception is wide open, especially in countries where oversight is a joke. In the twisted world of organic labelling claims, some in the industry have become the industry's own worse enemies by importing so-called organic feed and food products that are highly suspect as to claiming what they allege.

So what can the organic industry do to rectify this matter and bring back some integrity to this deceptive scenario? Well, not a lot and that is the inherent problem. Because there is no robust mandatory testing process, unscrupulous organic feed dealers will continue to import cheap suspect feeds just to stay competitive.

Money, as we all know, has a habit of trumping principles. I expect the organic industry knows this and hopes that this type of bad publicity just blows over. I believe, however, that it all becomes cumulative and that it continually picks away at the credibility and honesty of the "organic" label in the eyes of the consuming public.

That's an ominous situation being marketing experts caution that any bad publicity is to be avoided, particularly in the retail market.