A public interest group that focuses on food and agriculture, The Cornucopia Institute, announced this week that it had filed formal complaints with the USDA's organic program, and Wisconsin and Minnesota
officials, alleging that Target Corporation has misled consumers into thinking some conventional food items it sells are organic.
The complaints are the latest salvo into a growing controversy where corporate agribusiness and major retailers have been accused of blurring the line between "natural" products and food that has been grown, processed and properly certified organic under tight federal standards.
"Major food processors have recognized the meteoric rise of the organic industry, and profit potential, and want to create what is in essence 'organic light,' taking advantage of the market cachet but not being willing to do the heavy lifting required to earn the valuable USDA organic seal," said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at Cornucopia.
The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group discovered Target advertised Silk soymilk in newspapers nationwide, with the term "organic" pictured on the carton's label, when in fact the manufacturer, Dean Foods, had quietly shifted their products away from organics.
Dean Foods, and its WhiteWave division, received media scrutiny, and industry condemnation, this past spring for not notifying retailers or changing the UPC codes, when they quietly switched to conventional soybeans in their core products.
Dean/WhiteWave also received heat in the organic food and agriculture community when they decided to convert some of their Horizon products, the leading organic label in terms of sales volume, to cheaper "natural" (conventional) ingredients. "This really hit a nerve because one of these new Horizon products, Little Blends yogurt, is aimed specifically at toddlers, at an early stage of development, where the nutritional superiority of organic food and its utility in avoiding chemical residues in our food is so critically important," Kastel added.
A front-page story in the Chicago tribune in July outlined a consumer survey that showed the public was unclear about the difference between natural and organic labels and that some corporations, particularly Dean Foods, were taking advantage of the confusion in the marketplace.
The story quoted Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of the Shelton Group which conducted the survey, as saying, "They (consumers) think 'natural' is regulated by the government but that organic isn't, and of course, it's just the opposite."
This is not the first tangle involving Cornucopia and Target. The giant retailer's private label food line, Archer Farms, which blurs the line selling both natural and organically labeled food, came under scrutiny when Cornucopia discovered that its organic milk supplier, Colorado-based Aurora Dairy, was flagrantly violating federal organic livestock standards and filed a complaint with the USDA.
USDA investigators determined that Aurora had willfully violated 14 federal organic regulations. In what was condemned as a "sweetheart" deal by some in the organic industry, the Bush administration allowed Aurora to stay in business. Unlike some other retailers, Target stuck with Aurora as their milk supplier for their Archer Farms label.
The organic labeling issue is discussed in the October issue of the Exchange magazine, on stands at Outpost co-ops. More information can be found at the Cornucopia Institute's web site at www.cornucopia.org.
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