Staffing Cut While Uninspected Imports Crash US Farms
The lowdown on the diminishing USDA oversight of organics:
1. After the cancellation of the fall meeting of the National Organic Standards Board, the rescheduled confab has been minimized on an unprecedented level.
2. Oral public engagement, in person and online, has been eliminated.
3. At a time when US organic farmers are going out of business, unable to compete with allegedly fraudulent imports, National Organic Program staff has been reduced by a whopping 33% (from 85 to 57 employees).
4. Good news at the meeting: OrganicEye’s proposal to crack down on fraud by requiring online platforms to clearly identify the certifiers on products represented as organic has been placed on the agenda.
LA FARGE, WIS. — After initially being postponed because of the federal government shutdown, the USDA is holding its semiannual meeting of the National Organic Standards Board this week (virtually).
The NOSB was created by Congress to advise the USDA Secretary on implementing the federal law governing organic production and marketing, including having the veto power for whether or not any given synthetic material, or non-organic agricultural input or ingredient, should be allowed.
Historically, the board has met in person for three and a half long days, including an extensive amount of time set aside for public comments from organic industry stakeholders, farmers, processors, marketers, and consumers/eaters who gathered from around the country.
Oral public comments have now been eliminated from the agenda, and the virtual meeting has now been compressed to two partial days.
“NOSB meetings have always brought together key figures in the organic farming sector to deliberate on the trajectory of the industry and focus regulatory attention on problems, including import fraud and other improprieties such as illegal operations by livestock factories and industrial hydroponic greenhouses masquerading as organic,” said Mark Kastel, Executive Director of OrganicEye.
OrganicEye, acting as a governmental and corporate watchdog, said it views the public comments and opportunity to interact with the federal political appointees on the NOSB as the backbone of the public-private partnership that Congress created when it passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) in 1990.
“The organic industry is in crisis,” said Kastel. “And with US farms going out of business, unable to compete with the non-certified, uninspected, and untested ‘organic’ imports crushing them and pushing them out of the market, this is the worst time to see the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) downscaling.”
Along with the marketplace pressure farmers are experiencing, payments for previously appropriated cost-sharing for organic certification have been indefinitely delayed.
OrganicEye has also recently learned that NOP staffing has been radically reduced. At the end of FY25 the program had 57 employees, down from 85 a year earlier.
With the aggressive growth in the organic marketplace, and overdependence on imports, which are difficult to regulate, the industry has asked for and received increased funding for the NOP during every previous budgetary cycle. It has often been noted how unusual it is for commercial interests to actually petition the government for more rigorous regulatory oversight rather than the opposite.
“A reduction of force at the NOP by one third is certainly not out of character for this administration, which has radically cut all regulatory agencies, including virtually every responsibility at the USDA,” he continued.
According to Kastel, the USDA has never been a universally hospitable place for the organic program.
“During the deliberations in the late 1980s, before the passage of OFPA, the USDA actually testified before Congress that they didn’t support the passage of the legislation and didn’t want the responsibility of regulating organics,” he stated. “Since then, organic farmers have faced an adversarial environment under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with regulators who have supported corporate agribusiness interests in watering down the working definition of organic food and farming. However, this is the most drastic reduction in staff that we have seen in recent history.”
A ray of sunshine in the storm clouds over organic regulatory protection?
A pending formal citizen petition, drafted by OrganicEye, requesting the NOSB consider rulemaking that would require online retailers to comply with the same organic labeling requirements as apply to packaging, is on the docket for consideration by the NOSB at this meeting.
Current federal law requires that every package of organic food display a disclaimer that clearly identifies the name of the USDA-accredited certifier confirming all ingredients in the product, and the processing procedures, meet organic standards.
OrganicEye has, over the years, encountered numerous instances of fraudulent organic food being marketed on e-commerce sites. Without the ability to cross-reference the certifier in the USDA database, enforcement is very difficult.
The proposal submitted by OrganicEye would call for packaging panels to be presented on websites in a manner that makes all the information, including the name of the certifier, easy to read. Alternatively, the name of the certifier could be prominently displayed in a conspicuous place adjacent to the product image or listing.
“Online shoppers deserve access to the same information as in-store shoppers,” OrganicEye’s Kastel stated.
Although public comments are no longer being accepted, interested citizens can review the agenda and work documents, and observe the online deliberations on January 13 and 14, here.
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Read OrganicEye’s official comments pursuant to the January 2026 NOSB meeting.