The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) has announced a meeting of the board to take place November 3-5 at the Washington Plaza Hotel. In anticipation of this meeting, the Board will be accepting written comments and requests to present in person at the meeting until October 19. We would like to encourage all of you to submit comments to the board and, if you can, attend the meeting to voice your concerns about the way the National Organic Program is being run. This issue is important to everyone who uses food to maintain their health, i.e., everyone on the planet.
One of our main concerns with the NOSB is the lack of consumer representation on the Board. We need to ensure adequate consumer representation on the board and we need the Board to hear what consumers want.
Consumers of organic foods expect certain things. For example, organic beef should be grass-fed. Organic fish should be caught from their natural environment, not raised in an artificial farm and fed a non-indigenous diet that isn’t even entirely made up of organic feed, as the recently enacted NOSB regulations allow. Organic produce should be grown without the use of any substance that requires the donning of a haz-mat suit. And no organic food should be genetically modified. If the national organic standards don't meet those expectations, they no longer hold any meaning, and no one will pay extra for any product that uses them.
Help us tell the NOSB that consumers want the label Organic to mean something! |