Like other federal regulatory agencies, the USDA and its National Organic Program are facing staffing cuts, raising questions about the program’s future. Last week we learned that the semi-annual meetings of the National Organic Standards Board would now take place virtually. Not long after that announcement, the April meeting was indefinitely postponed.
The following email thread between NODPA Executive Director Ed Maltby, OrganicEye’s Mark Kastel, and Susan Beal, veterinarian and owner of Laughing Oak Farm, was shared on the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance listserv (ODAIRY). The conversation began before the postponement was announced and appears below in chronological order:
From: Organic Dairy Producers <ODAIRY@LISTSERV.NODPA.COM> On Behalf Of NODPA
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2025 5:45 PM
To: ODAIRY@LISTSERV.NODPA.COM
Subject: [NODPA-ODAIRY] NOSB meeting will now be held virtually
From the USDA:
“The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will meet to discuss substances petitioned for addition to or deletion from the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances (National List), substances due to sunset from the National List in 2027, and recommendations on organic policies.
The NOSB typically meets twice per year in various locations around the United States. Prior to meetings, the NOSB reviews written public comments and listens to oral public comments. During meetings, the NOSB discusses agenda items, and then votes on recommendations to the Secretary in a public forum. Detailed meeting information, including agendas, locations, proposals, and public comments, will be posted below as it becomes available. For information on previous meetings, visit the NOSB meetings page.
Meeting Information
The meeting will be held virtually on Zoom.”
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On Mar 1, 2025, at 9:37 AM, Mark Kastel, OrganicEye > wrote:
Thanks for passing this along, Ed.
The news could be worse as the administration is, as I understand it, dismantling some of the advisory panels and canceling meetings for others (theoretically, they can’t do that here since the NOSB was created by statute).
It’ll be interesting to see what’s on the agenda other than the statutory requirement that the board review sunsetting materials and consider petitions to add new compounds.
We, kind of, still have freedom of speech (I have been gaveled down, personally, at numerous NOSB meetings). So I sure wouldn’t discourage dairy producers from testifying via Zoom at the spring NOSB meeting to tell them that CAFOs milking 3-4X [3-4 times a day], with stocking densities of 5-10 cows per acre in the desert (effectively much higher because they are also cutting hay off the same “pasture”) is illegal and unethical and we need the new administration to take action.
I’m sure I don’t have to remind many folks on the list who monitor these activities that the ability of the board to set their own work plan and agenda was stripped from them during the Obama/Vil$ack/McEvoy administration (with the help of an important accomplice, former NOSB chair Tom Chapman [working for OTA member Clif Bar at the time], who has now gone on to be the co-CEO of the Organic Trade Association).
So it will be interesting to see if any policy work is on the agenda other than material review. That doesn’t mean we can’t bring issues up!
As you know, OrganicEye has a campaign currently going on trying to convince HHS Secretary Kennedy to persuade the President and USDA Secretary to clean up the corruption at the NOP. Since we’ve been screwed by every other Democratic and Republican administration, his potential support might be the wildcard in reining-in the illegal CAFOs and avalanche of imports that are crushing family farmers:
https://organiceye.org/can-rfk-jr-save-organics-chime-in-action-alert/
Mark
Mark A. Kastel
OrganicEye
PO Box 8
La Farge, Wisconsin 54639
_____________________________
From: Organic Dairy Producers <ODAIRY@LISTSERV.NODPA.COM> On Behalf Of alchemy
Sent: Sunday, March 2, 2025 8:49 AM
To: ODAIRY@LISTSERV.NODPA.COM
Subject: Re: [NODPA-ODAIRY] NOSB meeting will now be held virtually
Hey all,
Many of your thoughts mirror mine, Mark.
I do concur that it’s a good thing that this meeting has not been postponed or canceled – and statute can be an advantage here, too, even if citing it is used to protest some of the ways this meeting might be handled etc, etc.
I do feel that the zoom forum is going to really shift the dynamics and results of the meeting, though. We all know that there are side conversations, meetings beyond the officially scheduled ones, conversations over dinner and at the bar – and that all of these, particularly the latter group, can be valuable and happen in response to the (sometimes rapidly) changing terrain of / conversations and exchanges of the larger meeting. We also know that some of these conversations arise spontaneously, too, when people are gathered.
There’s not a simple way for these things to happen in the zoom meeting setup. Chat doesn’t cut the mustard here !
It’s also been my experience that, unless the larger agenda of the meeting is totally set up and steamrolled by the players (not to say that sort of thing ever happens ! : )) ). these “at the bar” and “in the hallways” meetings are always productive and often result in ideas and agreements etc that are then taken to the larger forum, to the floor.
Re the ideas, requests, information, draft of plans… that Organic Eye (and many others) are taking to Mr Kennedy and his team / staffers: It seems to me that many of those “asks” are not party-centric. I know that things are really in upheaval now and that many are really polarized around many of the things that are happening.
I encourage folks to look at the work that Kennedy is doing (including the words Mark wrote below) on its own merit. Sure, folks may not agree w/ everything he says or does. However, this current situation presents a unique opportunity to have things that have previously been ignored and marginalized (like some of the health and food and agriculture policies etc – that are important to this group) finally taken into consideration in a very different manner, one that actually transcends partisan politics – and some of these things are going to result in substantive and meaningful change, including their incorporation into statute.
Take care, steady on,
Susan Beal
Laughing Oak North
______________________________________
Thanks for your supportive words, Susan.
It seems we were both prematurely happy. The USDA has now postponed the NOSB meeting indefinitely after initially eliminating in-person meetings and making them “virtual.”
Before I respond to some of what you wrote, please let me appeal once again to the dairy leaders on this list: Send your message (which you can customize) to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As you suggested, Susan, this is a nonpartisan effort. You don’t have to support anything else the administration or RFK Jr. is doing —- we are pleading with him to intervene to reform the National Organic Program.
The Trump administration is dismantling regulatory programs across the entire executive branch of government. What’s different about organics? We asked for strict regulations! We’ve always said that’s what makes our industry unique.
OrganicEye’s beef with the USDA is that they haven’t been strictly enforcing the existing regulations, to the detriment of family-scale farmers. I can’t imagine what the organic industry would be like without any effective oversight.
It’s a long shot, I admit. But Kennedy has influence with Mr. Trump, so let’s take advantage of that.
Your lament, Susan, about canceling in-person meetings is well-taken. The lobbyists at the Organic Trade Association have a full-time presence in Washington. But the semiannual NOSB meetings allow farmers and their advocates to have a public voice and to, potentially, influence policy. That won’t happen on Zoom.
Please allow me to provide an example — what I refer to as a failed attempt to induce the “Stockholm Syndrome” (a practice that’s been endemic at the NOSB).
A few years ago, a new farmer-member was appointed to the board. He was one of the few small farmers in the country who was a member of the OTA and the only farmer in the entire state of Mississippi certified by CCOF (the country’s largest certifier, based in California, and a big contributor to the OTA). Which was probably not a coincidence.
Like many other members of the NOSB, he was presumably recruited. And although he was a highly intellectual and savvy board candidate, they assumed that they could “groom” him once he got on the board.
At the first meeting, they sat him next to Harold Austen, a handler representative working for one of the largest, primarily conventional, apple growers in the country. (I personally like Harold. He was very courteous and, unlike many board members who simply take their instructions from the lobbyists, he actually read all the research that I commissioned over the years. But he had a nearly 100% voting record in favor of synthetic chemicals and standing with the OTA.)
At the first meeting, the new farmer board member voted with the OTA-bloc almost exclusively.
Then I had dinner with him, and many others in the family farm movement got to know him, personally, as well.
At the next meeting, he wasn’t sitting next to Harold. And for the balance of his five years on the board, he had a stellar voting record fighting hydroponics and other OTA initiatives.
That turnaround, facilitated by his access to a full perspective of opinions, not just from OTA-friendly board members, could never have happened at a virtual meeting.
Who owns the US government/bureaucracy? We all do. Who owns the organic label? We all do.
Losing the experienced head at the NOP, ending remote work for the approximately three-quarters of the staff who are not in the Washington office, and laying-off employees does not bode well for beefing up enforcement and controlling widespread fraud in organics. Click here for more background.
Again, please reach out to Mr. Kennedy and impress upon him that your livelihoods are at stake: https://organiceye.org/can-rfk-jr-save-organics-chime-in-action-alert/
Sincerely yours,
Mark Kastel
Executive Director
OrganicEye