February 24, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mark A. Kastel, 608-625-2000 / mkastel@organiceye.org
Watchdog Reaches Out to Robert Kennedy, Jr. and New USDA Secretary for Help
 OrganicEye has reached out to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., a longtime organic advocate, cautioning him that if he does nothing more than cheerlead organic food and farming, he will be serving the interests of corporate lobbyists that have hijacked organics. As giant agribusinesses consolidated their marketplace power in organics, corporate lobbyists have achieved dominance in rulemaking, regulations, and enforcement — watering down the working definition of organic food. During previous Democratic and Republican administrations, the USDA allowed giant “organic” livestock factories (producing eggs, meat, and milk), industrial hydroponic produce mislabeled as organic (despite being grown in soilless systems in sealed buildings), and copious fraudulent imports, forcing authentic family farmers out of business. On his way out of office, USDA Secretary Vilsack ignored pleas to balance the needs of family farmers and consumers and continued to stack the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) with corporate-influenced members. The USDA organic seal has come to simultaneously represent two very different systems of agriculture, with authentic organic brands and local and regional farmers primarily connecting with shoppers at farmers markets, CSAs, and cooperative/independent retailers. OrganicEye’s video series, Kastel’s Kitchen, reveals some of the secrets to decoding the marketplace and brands when shopping. |
LA FARGE, WIS — After years of purported betrayals by successive Democratic and Republican administrations, the organic industry’s preeminent corporate and governmental watchdog, OrganicEye, has formally reached out to new HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., asking him to collaborate with the newly confirmed USDA Secretary, Brooke Rollins, in an effort to save the health, environmental, and economic promise of America’s interest in eating organic food.
Secretary Kennedy, a longtime organic advocate, with the support of President Donald Trump, has suggested a hallmark of his tenure will be creating a more nutritious and safer food supply.
As the $70 billion organic industry has experienced meteoric growth over the past 20 years, industry lobbyists representing the largest food companies that have invested in organics have convinced the USDA to allow “organic” hydroponic (soilless) produce production, livestock factories producing milk, meat, and eggs, and some markets being dominated by imports with a history of fraud.
Before outgoing USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack departed, he appointed additional corporate agribusiness functionaries to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) for five-year terms. Congress mandated the USDA Secretary to consult with the NOSB on implementation of the organic law.
OrganicEye and other industry stakeholders have accused Mr. Vilsack of an improper and cozy relationship with the industry’s major lobby group, the Organic Trade Association (OTA). Instead of representing family farmers and independent voices as designated by Congress, the NOSB continues to be dominated by agribusiness interests with memberships and affiliations with the lobbyists at the OTA – a conflict of interest that many farmers and eaters are asking Mr. Kennedy and Secretary Rollins to collaborate on correcting.
OrganicEye is distributing a sign-on letter to members of the organic community to raise the profile of a number of major illegal activities that took place during Vilsack’s tenure at the USDA (spanning 12 years during the Obama and Biden administrations) that have caused thousands of organic family farmers to lose their livelihoods and eaters to become victims of consumer fraud.
“Mr. Trump was abundantly clear during his campaign that his administration would be dedicated to preserving and creating quality jobs for American workers, and we need to hold him to this promise,” said Mark A. Kastel, Executive Director of OrganicEye.
“Hard-working American farm families are unable to compete and are losing their livelihoods to fraudulent imports from countries with endemic levels of commercial fraud (counterfeit brand name products, food adulteration, pirating intellectual property rights, and past organic fraud),” Kastel added.
OrganicEye has worked with the FBI, USDA, and foreign officials to help expose fraudulent imports from countries such as Turkey, India, and China, along with Africa and Central America.
“Some of the import fraud stems from the fact that the USDA has not enforced the statutory mandate that all organic food comes from farms that are certified under the USDA’s program, which includes a requirement for annual inspections,” said Kastel.
US farmers have complained that their annual inspection and certification fees are rising quickly to help pay for additional audit trail surveillance while, at the same time, the USDA is allowing foreign agribusinesses to supervise their own uncertified farmer-suppliers.
OrganicEye’s communications with Secretary Kennedy include the appeal, “It is imperative that you channel your well-documented history of support for organic food and farming into reforming USDA oversight. A corrupt relationship between past political appointees and the industry lobby has resulted in a material change in the working definition of what is meant by ‘organic’ food.”
The farm policy research group continues, “If you just wholeheartedly cheerlead what organic has become today as a pathway for fundamentally improving the well-being of an unhealthy society, you will simply be doing the bidding of corporate agribusiness investors, rather than endorsing/supporting truly authentic organic farming practitioners producing truly nutrient-superior options, which will pay long-term dividends in terms of the health and well-being of eaters.”
OrganicEye, based in La Farge, Wisconsin, and best known as an organic industry watchdog, has issued a briefing paper profiling the reach of the industry’s most powerful lobby group, the Organic Trade Association, into the NOSB.
OrganicEye’s analysis shows that seven of the current 15 NOSB members are intimately affiliated with the OTA, either as individual members, through their employers, and/or in some other professional capacity.
The board was established to ensure that the voices of organic farmers and consumers drove the direction of the USDA’s organic program when there was grave concern about handing over the budding organic farming movement to conventionally-focused USDA political appointees and bureaucrats, and the corrupting influence of corporate money.
After the passage of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, the USDA, during the Clinton and Bush administrations, monkey-wrenched the rulemaking and impeded implementation of the law. “It was a hostile and adversarial relationship,” stated Kastel.
Corporate agribusiness started acquiring major pioneering organic brands in earnest, and now control a significant majority of them. During the Obama and Biden administrations, Mr. Vilsack brought OTA-affiliated members of the industry, including one of their former head lobbyists, into his office, the National Organic Program, and, in increasing numbers, onto the NOSB.
In addition to the shift to corporate-friendly NOSB members, the Obama/Vilsack USDA stripped the congressionally empowered panel of its ability to set its own agenda and work plan. According to OrganicEye, recent history has “made a mockery” of the original intention of the board to act as an independent body receptive to the interests and concerns of all organic stakeholders.
To counter the overreliance on lobbyists to help write laws (which is all too common in Washington), OrganicEye has strongly encouraged Secretaries Kennedy and Rollins to create balance by amplifying the voices of farmers and public sector groups that have, for decades, helped launch, nurture, and monitor the growth of organics.
“The OTA has spent years, and invested untold corporate dues, in honing the persona that it is a tax-exempt nonprofit group working in the interest of the public when, in fact, it is a ruthless Washington-based corporate trade-industry lobby group that has crossed swords with organic farmers and eaters/consumers on virtually every controversial issue before the NOSB,” Kastel lamented.
The five 2025 appointees to the NOSB include employees of the agribusiness giants Groupe Danone (owner of the Silk brand) and Taylor Farms (owner of the Earthbound Farms and Taylor Brands). They join continuing members of the panel that include a former OTA employee, Grimmway Farms (Cal-Organic, Bunny-Luv), the largest organic grower in the nation with tens of thousands of acres under organic cultivation, and an OTA-member certifier working in hydroponics.
As it has done previously, OrganicEye has published a backgrounder on new and continuing board members based on information obtained by filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the application packages of 2025 NOSB nominees, including some eminently qualified, but less politically connected, candidates who were passed over.
“I am cautiously optimistic that our efforts to amplify the voices of OrganicEye members, including many farmers, along with others in the organic community might have an impact,” said Kastel.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone, on any part of the political spectrum, that the Trump administration is approaching reforming the executive branch in a unique and controversial manner. I hope, just as in manufacturing, the President and his Cabinet will fulfill their promises by prioritizing US organic farmers who are being crushed by runaway imports and illegal and unethical conduct at the USDA’s National Organic Program.”
-30-
MORE:
The NOSB was created by Congress through the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 to establish the direction for the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program and act as a buffer against agribusiness lobbyists in recognition of the fact that the importance of organic foods from the perspective of consumers, family farmers, and environmentalists was not shared by the USDA (the agency testified against passage of OFPA when it was being debated in Congress).
Big Food has consolidated ownership of most of the largest and best-known organic brands. At the same time, the USDA has been criticized for “stacking” the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which is charged with guiding the regulatory oversight of organic farming and food production, with members from, or friendly to, corporate interests.
OrganicEye continues the fight against weakening the NOSB through their consumer education and other efforts, including focusing attention on marketplace activism in an effort to save organics.
Some of the most prominent, and still independently owned, brands in the organic industry have made their opinions clear concerning the activities of the Organic Trade Association by very publicly resigning their memberships. These businesses include Nature’s Path, the largest producer of organic breakfast cereals and granola; iconic Dr. Bronner’s soaps and organic food products; and superfoods pioneer Nutiva.
Farmers and ethical businesses are also increasingly shifting their patronage from USDA accredited certifiers that have betrayed foundational organic precepts (most of which maintain OTA membership) to the ten accredited organizations that refuse to certify hydroponics and livestock factories (none of which pay dues to the OTA).