Farmers Sue FDA For Appointing Unqualified Individuals To Organics Board

[Julieanne]

Mike Barrett
April 22 2016

The Cornucopia Institute, a public interest group of thousands of organic farmers and consumers, and two of its members have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, alleging unqualified individuals have been put in place to determine what is “organic.”
The lawsuit points to the USDA as well as Vilsack for “appointing unqualified individuals to the National Organic Standards Board,” a committee that advises the USDA on how to implement the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/group-farm...#ixzz46rCsYnhu

[grulla]

Great article, "Julieanne". The FDA is becoming a political football when it comes to organic certification, (and other related food health issues). It has been my belief that the organic certification system/program should be operated by a private, NONPROFIT organization such as the OCA or Cornucopia.

[Julieanne]

That's how it works in Oz grulla. I was involved in setting the standards for the first certifying organisation - the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia ( NASAA ) - way back in the eighties. There are now several, including Biodynamic. The Department of Agriculture wasn't remotely interested for many years, as no-one thought there was enough organic produce to bother with. We had to pressure them to set aside separate containers for organic wheat, which they didn't seem to know even existed. Of course, they hadn't actually looked!

[Islander]

Julie, is there a difference between organic and biodynamic?

[megan49]

Islander, as i understand it, yes. I tend to think of biodynamic being a subset of organic farming because it doesn't just take into account using organically grown items, but there's also a study of moon and planetary phases on when to plant, till, reap, and also a certain way to do those things. I read a book about it a long time ago now that talked about Dr. Rudolf Steiner's beliefs, but it was written in such a way that my brain couldn't absorb very much of it. The one thing i remembered was his mentioning filling a cow horn with manure and burying it in your garden pointing a certain way.

I had double-dug beds which were working very well for me and practiced intensive gardening techniques with heavy applications of compost on each of the beds, but the biodynamic school took things to a different level, and i just wasn't ready then.

[Islander]

Does this include the ancient practice of "planting by the signs"? All I can remember is that you plant root crops when the moon is waning and top-growth crops when the moon is waxing. Where's an Old Farmer's Almanac when you need one?

[megan49]

At its most basic level, yes, but there's a whole energy/spiritual side to it as well and that's where my mind got muddled. I've just been doing a web search to refamiliarize myself and see if any of it would make more sense now. I've not gotten very far and would value others' input on this.

this site has a clear enough overview but i think it's only the very edge of the rabbit hole:
https://www.biodynamics.com/what-is-biodynamics

[Julieanne]

megan, I tried to read Steiner a couple of times and gave up. There's something about the way he writes that makes it difficult to absorb. I got far more useful information from Alex Podolinski's Biodynamic lectures, probably out of print now. He was an Australian Biodynamic farmer, and a TV documentary in the eighties about his farming methods brought more responses than they had ever received to any programme!

Biodynamics is rather like homeopathy - you either accept that there may be something beyond our current scientific knowledge or you don't. Interestingly, both originated in Germany.

[Islander]

That is interesting, Julieanne. Now you two have aroused my curiosity and I'll try to persue it.

[Julieanne]

Megan, out of curiosity I did a search for Podolinski, and found several sites selling his books. Amazon have used copies from $5.93. I lent mine to someone and never got them back, but can't remember who. Happens a lot!

http://www.amazon.com/Bio-dynamic-ag.../dp/0959045228

Islander, this is an interesting discussion that may appeal to you

http://biodynamics.net.au/the-scient...f-biodynamics/