The poverty of riches (and a poverty of ethics)
By Mark Kastel, executive director, OrganicEye
The nation’s largest organic certifier, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for conflicts of interest related to accepting large sums of cash from their largest agribusiness clients, has their tin cup out with the launch of a $5 million fundraising campaign.
CCOF is an operation with annual revenue in the range of $25 million and assets of $15 million. Purported to be a nonprofit charitable organization, some of their revenue goes to support the lobbyists at the infamous Organic Trade Association. (CCOF has been listed as one of their largest donors.)
Apparently, that’s not enough cash. Instead of allocating some of their voluminous surpluses to establish an endowment fund, they’re hitting up hard-working farmers and eaters in California, asking them to dig even deeper into their pockets. I’m sure some of the corporations who have been donating, big time, to CCOF coffers will once again kick in to (in our analysis) illegally fund CCOF over and above the large certification fees they already pay.
That’s the essence of our legal complaint currently being adjudicated under federal administrative law — gross conflicts of interest at the nation’s largest certifiers brought to you by the friendly regulators at the National Organic Program (not to mention over $100 million in USDA money going directly to CCOF and other “nonprofits” in the organic industry).
The investors who have built giant “organic” livestock factories and industrial-scale hydroponic greenhouses think that the collusion between their certifier and the USDA is hunky-dory. We beg to differ.