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  • From: "Steve Sando" <steve AT mrlucky.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] NY Times Editorial: Staying Organic
  • Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 09:11:46 -0800

March 5, 2003
Staying Organic

If it weren't so dangerous, the chicken fight going on in Congress would be
laughable. Representative Nathan Deal, a Georgia Republican, slipped a
paragraph into a $397 billion spending bill that would allow farmers to give
livestock nonorganic feed but call their meat, eggs and milk "organic"
anyway. That would clearly violate the new United States Department of
Agriculture standard. Specifically, the provision, which was suggested by a
Georgia chicken farm that contributed to Mr. Deal's campaign, prohibits the
government from requiring that organic livestock producers use organic feed.

This is just the kind of provision, inserted at the last minute with Speaker
Dennis Hastert's consent and without debate, that makes you wonder what else
lies hiding in the darkly lit byways of the spending bill, passed by the
House on Feb. 13.

Given the bitter Congressional politics of recent months, Mr. Deal could not
have expected the speed with which a bipartisan coalition formed to attack
his chicken deal, a group that includes fellow Republicans, major food
corporations and the agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman. But then this is
exactly the kind of issue that creates cost-free bipartisanship. Everybody
but Mr. Deal gets a chance to look good.

And yet, his stealth paragraph, threatening as it is, may indirectly aid the
cause of organic agriculture by alarming its Congressional supporters.
Senators Patrick Leahy and Olympia Snowe have introduced legislation,
co-sponsored by more than 50 other senators, that would kill Mr. Deal's
provision. And Mr. Leahy and Representative Ron Kind have announced the
creation of an organic caucus, designed to protect federal organic
standards, which took effect last October, from other assaults.

There is a substantive point to be taken from Mr. Deal's effort to help out
a local chicken farm. Too few farmers are raising organic grain for feed,
especially in a market glutted with heavily subsidized conventional grain.
Mr. Deal's provision became law when the spending bill was signed, and it
must be repealed. Congress should look for ways to stimulate organic grain
production rather than encouraging livestock producers to cop out, thereby
confusing consumers and undoing the years of work it took to create the
U.S.D.A.'s organic standards.

Steve
www.ranchogordo.com




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