Debate Rages on Organic Labeling of Body Care Products

April 22, 2003
By Melinda Fuller
Los Angeles Times

The "totally organic experience" Procter & Gamble promises to people who wash their hair with Clairol Herbal Essences really isn't.

The only truly organic ingredients in the shampoo are a few herbs. Technically, the product doesn't meet new California regulations that say 70 percent of contents have to be certified as organic for a beauty product to be labeled as such.

The state's organic rules enacted in January -- the first in the United States for cosmetics -- don't affect Clairol Herbal Essences, since it's the shampooing experience, not the shampoo's contents, that are advertised as organic.

That's not good enough for organic activists, who say labeling requirements should be as stringent for what you put into your body as what you put on it.

And with mainstream cosmetics companies moving to cash in on the all-natural trend, these activists say the government should step in and create rules to protect consumers.

"We want to see the word 'organic' defended," said Diana Kaye, co-owner of Middletown, Md.-based body-care company Terressentials. "The word 'natural' is now completely without meaning."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates organic food, said it intends to do the same for organic personal-care products.

"It's an area that a lot of people are asking us to get involved in," said Richard Mathews, manager of the USDA's National Organic Program. "You may have a product that has one organic ingredient in it and they still use 'organic' on the label. That may mislead consumers into believing it's more organic than it really is."

But the campaign for organic labeling rules, for such products as shampoos and anti-wrinkle creams, is in its early days and it could be more complex than the 12-year fight that resulted last October in federal standards for organic food.

One reason: Purveyrors of natural cosmetics can't agree on how strict the rules should be.

Many natural personal-care companies -- such as Levlad Inc., maker of the Nature's Gate line -- say a labeling regime for products people don't eat does not have to be as rigorous as it is for lettuce or bread.

Nature's Gate executives say they're struggling to come up with natural ingredients that will create suds, and keep bacteria from growing while a product sits on store shelves.

Nature's Gate uses such chemical compounds as olefin sulfonate and cocamidopropyl betaine, sudsing and foaming agents, in its Organics shampoo. Still, the company says it would rather not use chemicals. We have greatly reduced these ingredients as much as possible, said Shelly Rubinstein, a marketing manager with Levlad.

That's not good enough for David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps in Escondido, Calif., a long-time seller of natural soaps, which is moving to launch a new line of pure, organic soaps. Bronner and other members of the Organic Consumers Association circulated a petition at the recent Natural Products Expo urging the USDA to issue rules that would ban use of chemicals in products such as those of rival Nature's Gate.

The consumer group also is drafting a complaint to state regulators about petroleum-based ingredients in Avalon Natural Products' shower gels, shave creams and shampoos.

Bronner and others in the industry also are concerned about the use of the most natural ingredient of all: water, which makes up a large part of many beauty products. And they believe hydrosols -- condensation collected after steaming herbs to extract their essential oils -- shouldn't be counted as organic, because they have no therapeutic value, they say.

State and federal rules prohibit water from being counted as an organic ingredient in food, so hydrosols, Bronner and organic proponents say, shouldn't get credit in beauty products either. They tell you it's beautiful, it's healing and everything else, but it's just water, Bronner said.

Nature's Gate executives disagree, saying that hydrosols do collect beneficial compounds from the herbs during the steaming process. Labels on Nature's Gate products call hydrosols an intense elixir of plant essences.

Under California's rules, hydrosols are organic agricultural ingredients because they are believed to have about the same water content as the herbs whose steaming creates the condensation. But no one is sure exactly how many actual plant compounds hydrosols contain.

We have not pulled samples and analyzed it yet, says Ray Green, manager of the state's organic program. This is relatively new, and it may need some further clarification to substantiate.

As that debate rages within the natural-cosmetics community, people are buying more and more organic beauty items. Sales of natural personal-care products have recently been growing at a 15 percent clip, according to the Natural Marketing Institute, reaching $2.8 billion last year. They're poised to go higher, according to industry experts.

But the market hasn't hit the right size yet, for major cosmetics companies to jump in, said William H. Steele, a Banc of America Securities analyst who covers the personal-care industry. However, he added, They've certainly got their eye on it.

Cosmetics and personal-care companies are always on the lookout for ways to attract health-conscious baby boomers, he noted, and going organic, at least on the label, is one route.

Tom Donegan, general counsel for the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, said members feel there is a demand for organic products. Such mainstream companies as Estee Lauder have begun marketing natural products; Estee Lauder bought the Aveda brand in 1997.