The organic foods movement--led by Heinz Corporation or we the people? The time to choose is now.

• Author: Cienfuegos, Paul
• Position: Biodevastation

In the past few months, the USDA has once again attempted to weaken the federal organics standards that so many Americans have worked hard to enshrine into federal law. These changes would have allowed food labeled as "USDA organic" to contain hormones and antibiotics in dairy cattle, pesticides on produce and potentially contaminated fishmeal as feed for livestock. As happened with a number of other outrageous recent USDA actions, citizens groups and the organic food industry rallied in opposition, and were successful in reversing the proposed changes.

The newest round of protests against such changes reminds us of the more than 200,000 letters Americans sent to the USDA back in 1997/98 pleading with the agency to not allow toxic sludge, irradiated food, and GMOs to be included in a list of allowable food growing practices for the then-new federal organic food regulations. The USDA backed down then as well, in the face of the outpouring of public opinion.

It seems we have won again. Or have we?

Could it be that handing regulatory authority over to the USDA regarding organic foods creates a larger problem than it solves? And is it conceivable that this problem could have been averted entirely if we the people had thought more critically about our safe food movement's own decision-making processes?

Let's review the history.

In the 1970s, the owners of many small local farms and food production companies realized that they needed a new standard of food production that would prohibit a wide variety of toxic processes from ever coming in contact with their foods. These local free-thinking individuals got together and drafted a set of proposed organic food standards designed to become law at the state level. No big food companies came out to oppose or weaken the legislation because these companies hadn't yet envisioned the tremendous profitability of what has since become one of the fastest growing sectors of the entire American economy--organic food products.

Because organic certification rules were slightly different from state to state, organic food growers and producers had to be aware of these variations in order to be able to market their products in every state. In states without their own standards, an organic product could be sold as such as long as it was certified by one of the other states' certifiers. But in spite of this difficulty, the organic industry grew rapidly; product choice kept expanding.

If everything was humming along so smoothly, then why did more than 200,000 Americans write letters to the USDA in 1997/98 begging them to not allow GMOs, irradiation and toxic sludge as fertilizer on...