For related articles and information, please visit OCA’s All About Organics page.

Recently, Mr. Mischa Popoff wrote an op-ed for
Food Safety News critical of the organic movement. Popoff is a former Canadian organic certification inspection contractor, the author of a self-published book critical of organics, and a commentator affiliated with ultra-conservative think tanks in the U.S. that are funded by agrochemical interests.

The article below, entitled, “Who is Mischa Popoff?,” was penned by researchers at The Cornucopia Institute in 2011. It remains accurate and relevant today.


When The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group, officially launched in April 2004, one of its primary issue areas was what it referred to as “The Corporate Attack on Organic Agriculture.” At the time, Cornucopia’s focus was on the father-and-son team of Dennis and Alex Avery at the ultra-conservative Hudson Institute’s campaign to discredit organics. Now, in 2011, after seven years of successfully exposing the genesis of Hudson’s ire, and greatly diminishing its effectiveness, a new generation of “Trojan horse” naysayers has emerged.

The latest attacks come from Mischa Popoff, a Canadian who purports to be an advocate for organics and is publicizing his self-published book entitled, “Is It Organic? The author misses few opportunities to impugn the integrity of the organic label, or USDA oversight, while simultaneously defending biotechnology and the industrial agriculture system that organics seeks to replace.

“Addressing the potential damage from attacks by the Hudson Institute, and other right-wing think tanks such as the Hoover Institution, the Heartland Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was relatively easy,” said Mark A. Kastel, codirector at the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute. “Every rebuttal that we published, or preemptive media advisory we issued, was put into context by including the corporate agribusiness funding base for the work of these entities.”

Like the Averys, Popoff is a conservative ideologue, a global warming denier, an ardent critic of hybrid automobiles, and has suggested that the American mortgage crisis that precipitated the financial meltdown was caused by “overregulation.” His book sold on his website is subtitled: “The Inside Story of Who Destroyed the Organic Industry, Turned It into a Socialist Movement and Made Million$ in the Process, and a Comprehensive History of Farming, Warfare and Western Civilization from 1645 to the Present.”

“Popoff calling the $30-billion organic industry a ‘socialist movement,'” says Cornucopia’s Kastel, “is akin to the fascist leaders in Germany, during the 1920s and ’30s, referring to their movement as the National Socialist party. It’s Orwellian doublespeak. Nowhere in the food industry have entrepreneurs and investors realized greater financial reward, with virtually no governmental funding, than in meeting the higher standards consumers are seeking by paying a premium for organic food.”