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Tuesday, September 04 2007 @ 08:07 AM Central Daylight Time
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The market for organic food has gone up sky-high in the US lately. Americans have already spent some $16.7 billion on organic food last year, up from $13.8 billion in 2005, and purchases are expected to grow by 20% this year. However, some aspects of organic's growing popularity worry advocates like Mark Kastel, 52, from Rockton, Wis., who is now leading one of the food industry's biggest debates: Organic food's increasing industrialization.
Kastel has become a leader of the organic-food movement. In 2004 he helped organize the family-farm advocacy group Cornucopia Institute, and has filed seven complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the last two years, against large firms like Wal-Mart and some of the nation's largest organic milk producers - for failing to meet federal organic standards.
The first complaint filed by Cornucopia in January 2005, alleged that the Platteville, Colo., farm owned by Aurora Organic Dairy, one of the nation's largest organic milk producers, confined thousands of organic cows in factory-like settings with little or no access to pasture for grazing. Cornucopia followed up with two other complaints regarding Aurora's operations.
The USDA recently announced its investigators had found that Aurora failed to keep proper records about how its cows were bred, and mixed regular cows with organic cows. The government and the firm reached an agreement, under which the Aurora will be allowed to keep its organic certification if it makes adjustments that include reducing the number of its cows, from about 2,200 to 1,200. Under current federal rules, set by the USDA's National Organic Program, organic cows must have access to pasture. Dairy is the second-fastest-growing sectors of the organic-food industry, after meat. In 2006, Americans spent $2.7 billion on organic dairy products, up from $2.1 billion from last year, according to the Organic Trade Association.
Vanessa Arellano Doctor
http://primeherbal.com |
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