Washington Feels the Heat from 30 Million Organic Consumers

Political Game of Chicken
April 9, 2003
By Suzanne Nelson,
Roll Call (Washington, DC)

Whole Foods Pressuring Congress to Change Provision

Its customers are what some in the industry call "deliberate eaters,"
but it's still not every day that shoppers at Whole Foods Market get a
legislative action card at the checkout asking them to contact their
Member of Congress.

About 1 million such cards were distributed to customers recently,
pronouncing that "Congress Weakens Organic Standards!" and telling
consumers how to contact their lawmakers.

Twelve lines in the fiscal 2003 omnibus appropriations bill - inserted
at the request of Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) to help chicken producers in
his district - essentially undid efforts spanning 12 years to enact
national organic standards. In what detractors called a "last-minute
rider," the measure undermined the organic label for meat, poultry and
dairy by allowing products to be labeled "organic" even if the animals
are not fed 100 percent organic grain.

And thus began a grassroots effort to repeal the provision, an effort
that managed to capture the attention of lawmakers and their
constituents even with a war in Iraq dominating the news.

A stand-alone bill to repeal the Deal language, sponsored by Sen.
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), garnered 52 co-sponsors in just three days.
Before it was adopted last week as an amendment to the Senate's version
of the war supplemental now in conference committee, it had 68 signed
supporters.

"The swift and strong groundswell of opposition to that rider has been
an eye-opener for many in Washington," Leahy said.

Once considered just a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing hippies, organic
consumers have driven the growth of the agriculture industry for the
past several years and are quickly becoming a major player in
agriculture politics.

Although only about 2 percent of the food supply in the United States
is grown using organic methods, during the past decade sales of organic
products have shown an annual increase of at least 20 percent, according
to the Organic Farming Research Foundation, making it the industry's
largest growing sector. By 2005, the organic food business is expected
to be an $18 billion-a-year industry.

"What's been striking to me is that [when] this rider was kind of added
I think there was this sense that this was a niche market, a sidelined
group of crunchy granolas that didn't have much political clout and if
you wanted to go in and mess with the standard, who was going to stand
in your way?" observed lobbyist Steve Etka.

Immediately following the omnibus becoming law, the National Organic
Coalition hired Etka Consulting to lobby specifically for its repeal.

Interestingly, Deal himself is now supporting the abrogation of his own
language.

"We asked the Georgia Senators to accept Senator Leahy's language, and
we've asked the Speaker to accept the language" in the conference
report, Deal's chief of staff, Chris Riley, said Tuesday.

It was with the help of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that Riley got
language in the omnibus. Hastert's office has since publicly backed away
from the provision and put the onus on Deal.

Explaining his boss' tactical change, Riley said that Deal now has
assurances from the Agriculture Department that a study will be
completed soon investigating the availability and price of organic
grain. (The omnibus language that allowed producers to use the organic
label on meat and poultry fed with nonorganic feed was contingent upon a
department study showing that organic feed costs twice as much as
conventional feed.)

Deal also is now focused on "food safety" issues as it relates to the
organics industry, according to Riley. He declined to elaborate, other
than to say that Deal plans to pursue hearings in the Energy and
Commerce Committee, on which he sits.

Riley also denies that the wording in the omnibus was "last minute," as
opponents have contended. "We asked the Appropriations subcommittee [on
Agriculture] chairman back in May for the language to be included," he
said.

Regardless of the timing, longtime proponents of stringent national
organic definitions felt the wording was the last in a series of
unacceptable assaults.

"Getting the organic standards right was a long and difficult process,"
Leahy said in a statement. The Vermont Senator introduced the national
organics standards that became law as part of the 1990 farm bill, but
the fight over the wording of the Department of Agriculture regulations
ensued for 12 years. In October 2002 the final definitions for what
constitutes an organic product were issued.

It was during that battle that the organic movement first made its heft
known in Washington. In 1997, the Agriculture Department issued draft
regulations for organic standards that included irradiated and
genetically modified foods and products grown or harvested on farms that
used sewage sludge as fertilizer. Some 300,000 individuals contacted the
department to comment on the regulations - the biggest response to date
on any federal regulation - the vast majority of which said that such
methods should disqualify foods from being considered organic.

"I think the lesson is it's a broad community working closely together
and have a pretty strong bond because of what they've been through,"
Etka said.

The fight for standards goes back almost two decades. Responding to
many California farmers growing conventional products and marketing them
as organic, Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) authored standards when he was a
state Assemblyman that later became the basis for Leahy's legislation.

"When this rider was added in the appropriations bill it really tapped
into all of that history and there was kind of a feeling that: Don't you
know how important it is to all of these people that these standards
have some integrity?" Etka continued.

What opponents perceived as deceptive tactics by Deal and others in
slipping the language into a 12,000-page bill served as a galvanizing
point for trade and consumer groups.

"That's not the way changes should be done," Organic Trade Association
spokeswoman Holly Givens said of a process that doesn't allow for public
comment, adding that the 1,200 members of OTA told their customers
across the country to oppose the Deal provision.

Placing the emphasis on getting word out quickly, Whole Foods decided
to distribute the business-type cards to customers.

"What people got caught up in was the trickery that went down. We were
less interested in that, but it prompted us to take action," said Sarah
Kenney, mid-Atlantic director of marketing for Whole Foods.

"There's a lot going on in the world right now," so the company decided
to direct its customers to the Web site and let their interest drive the
effort, she added. "And the outpouring was tremendous."

The standards have at times been a point of cohesion for an industry
that is still defining its image and its market.

"One thing that does unify all parts of the industry are the
standards," Givens said. "Across the board it was important to everybody
whether it was a small farm or a large company."

With 143 stores and $2.7 billion in annual sales, Whole Foods is the
largest retailer in the organic and natural foods market worldwide. But
one of the interesting aspects of the efforts to repeal the omnibus
language is the level of cooperation among trade and consumer groups,
and even among retailers.

Wild Oats, which has about 75 stores nationwide, launched a similar
grassroots campaign to Whole Foods - and even acknowledged its
competitor's role in the process.

"The industry swung in to action. Retailers like us and Whole Foods put
letters in the stores for customers to sign," said Mary Mulry, Wild
Oats' senior director of product development and standards.

Company executives called key Members and made them aware of the
organic retailers and producers in their districts. Mulry used the
example of Boulder, Colo., where Wild Oats is headquartered. The city is
also home to Horizon Organic and White Wave, two of the most prominent
producers in the industry.

"We can show pretty clearly with our Senators and Representatives that
we are a fairly strong voice ... to let them know that the industry is
important to their constituents," she added.

But in many ways it's not just the size of the industry or its
stratospheric growth that insiders say turn heads in Washington.

"We have activist customers," Mulry observed, adding that Wild Oats had
more clicks on the "call to action" in the community section of its home
page recently than any promotional event or another informational
campaign.

Even the mainstream food industry is rushing to hop aboard, perhaps the
strongest evidence that organics are taking a significant hold on
agriculture. Many "traditional" companies now have burgeoning organic
lines, including Frito Lay, General Mills and Tysons Foods. And the
latter two have come out publicly supporting strong organic standards.

Although Ed Nicholson, director of media and community relations for
Tysons Foods, stipulated that the company's organic line is a "very
small portion of our business," he said his company doesn't believe the
organic standards should be compromised.

"There are a lot of people who want the assurance that those organic
products are certified. And for those people, the organics standards are
important, and we are willing to go to bat for them," he said.

And as producers such as Petaluma Poultry attest, the industry's growth
is just the beginning.

"There's serious money to be made in this category," said Randy
Duranceau, director of marketing and sales.

And as for its grassroots support, Duranceau said organic consumers are
by and large "passionate, well-educated and very well-informed about
what is going on. I think it's caught a lot of [people] off-guard."

Many in the industry agree that this is probably the last time that
will happen.

The industry is finding its "voice here in Washington," said Michael
Sligh, director of the Rule Advancement Foundation International USA,
which works with issues that affect rural communities and seeks to
improve agricultural sustainability. Sligh was also the first chairman
of the National Organic Standards Board.

"There is a growing sense in the Senate and in the House of a need for
informal working groups on organics - a positive sign that this is
something that needs to be taken seriously," he said.

Copyright 2003 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved.