"The “USDA Organic” label on your #produce aisle might not be as advertised. The inspector general released an audit yesterday that lights into agency officials tasked with overseeing organic standards. It investigated how good a job they’re doing with ostensibly “organic” #imports, and found that it’s way too lax. The report checked to see if imports sold domestically as organic were in fact compliant with the USDA’s clear-cut standard. 🌐 Unfortunately, it turns out, the agency’s #Agricultural #Marketing Service (the office that monitors compliance) can’t “provide reasonable assurance” that those items from abroad are actually “from #certified organic #foreign #farms and #business,” the report notes. The #inspector general’s office decided it should look into this mess after alarming reports surfacedback in May that some 21 million pounds of conventional soybeans, plus a few million more of #corn, had somehow entered American grocery stores carrying a #bogus certified-organic label. Results from this audit suggest that the USDA should find a way to wake its #food-monitoring department up. 🌐 The report says the AMS can’t, simply put, prove that foreign products are from suppliers that follow the USDA’s organic standards. In fact, monitoring is such a joke that auditors learned, in a bonus surprise, that there’s not even an effective procedure in place to prevent shipments of legit organic food from sometimes getting sprayed with extremely nonorganic #insecticides like aluminum phosphide upon arrival, alongside the conventional produce. The report acknowledges that these failures increase “the risk that non-organic products may be imported as organic into the United States,” before adding that it can also “create an unfair #economic #environment for U.S. organic producers." 🌐 Several members of #Congress wasted no time in blasting the agency. The USDA failed to say in its report how widespread it thinks this problem is." 🌐 Source: grubstreet.com 🌐 #theboycottmovement #tbmnews #usda #organic @usdagov
