The Organic Consumers Association: Who We Are & What We're Doing June 2000 Background Information: The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) The OCA is a grassroots non-profit public interest organization which deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, corporate accountability, and environmental sustainability. We are the only organization in the US focused exclusively on representing the views and interests of the nation's estimated ten million organic consumers. Our national coordination center is located in Little Marais, Minnesota and our West Coast field office is located in San Francisco. The OCA has additional staff in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota; Los Angeles; Seattle; Boston, Massachusetts; and Washington, D.C. as well as 45,000 members, subscribers, and volunteers across the US. Our US and international policy board is broadly representative of the organic, family farm, environmental, and public interest community. The Organic Consumers Association was formed in 1998 in the wake of the mass backlash by organic consumers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed national regulations for organic food. Through the OCA's SOS (Save Organic Standards) Campaign, as well as the work of our allies in other organizations, the organic community was able to mobilize 280,000 consumers to send in letters and emails to the USDA. In this project the OCA worked in cooperation with hundreds of natural food stores, consumer co-ops, Community Supported Agriculture groups, and farmers markets, as well as thousands of individual volunteers across the country--a relationship which has continued through the present time. The mass backlash from organic consumers and farmers across the nation forced the USDA--at least temporarily--to back-off from degrading organic standards by allowing controversial practices such as genetic engineering, irradiation, toxic sludge, and factory farm-style production practices to be part of national USDA organic standards and labels. This year the OCA and our allies once again helped stimulate 40,000 organic consumers to write in comments to the USDA, telling them to strengthen, not weaken proposed organic standards. In just over two years, the OCA has grown to having over 45,000 members, subscribers and volunteers nationwide. Our website <www.purefood.org> is the largest and most popular website in the country dealing with issues of food safety, genetic engineering, and organic agriculture. In May, 2000 <www.purefood.org> received 885,000 hits, which means that up to several thousand people a day are reading and downloading information from our site. Our site has been designated as a "favorite site" by many journalists and public interest activists, and is featured prominently on popular web search engines such as Yahoo.com. Our electronic newsletter BioDemocracy News has a monthly circulation of 30,000 subscribers, and our articles and information are widely syndicated and reprinted, both on the internet and in traditional hard copy publications. Our web site, research, and media team are considered by reporters and radio talk show hosts to be among some of the nation's top experts on food safety and organic food. Our media team provides background information, interviews, and story ideas to TV and radio producers and journalists on a daily basis--from national TV networks to the alternative press. Our field organizers provide advice and coaching to grassroots activists across the nation and coordinate our network of 10,000 volunteers. Update on Activities of the Organic Consumer Association Summer, 2000 National Grassroots Network: The OCA currently has a staff of 12 people, seven in Minnesota and five in other parts of the country. We currently have 100,000 people in our data base, including subscribers to our electronic newsletter, members, volunteers, and supporters, and 1800 cooperating retail coops, natural food stores, CSAs, and farmers markets. We have 500 key volunteers and coordinators working on developing OCA/BioDemocracy action teams across the country. Our political program is the Food Agenda 2000--a three point platform calling for (1) a global moratorium on genetically engineered foods and crops; (2) a phase-out of the most dangerous industrial agriculture and factory farming practices; and (3) the conversion of American agriculture to at least 30% organic by the year 2010. Coalition Work: We currently participate in three national coalitions, the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (on organic standards), the Genetic Engineering Action Network (a national anti-GE campaign), and a new national coalition called the Genetically Engineered Food Alert (GEFA). Ronnie Cummins sits on the national steering committee of GEAN and the GEFA. We have an ongoing national telephone bank which has called 55,000 organic consumers since January, 1999 and have begun direct mail outreach as well. In November, 1999 we did a national mailing to leading restaurant chefs in conjunction with the Chefs Collaborative 2000 Organization, which has resulting in approximately 200 chefs signing on so far to a call for a moratorium on GE food. Major projects in 2000: Our major projects are the following: (1) BioDemocracy Campaign--Our genetic engineering campaign to drive GE foods and crops off the market and covert US agriculture to organic. This is our major project, to which we are devoting the majority of our staff time and budget. This project includes public education, media work, organizing protests and media events, leafletting supermarkets, coalition-building, and helping organize shareholder actions at annual corporate shareholder meetings. As part of this project we have helped spearhead protests at FDA Hearings on genetic engineering in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, California. We have also organized press events and "Frankenfoods Dumps" at supermarkets in California, New York, and Washington, D.C. Other Frankenfoods Dumps have taken place in Boston, Baltimore, Albany, Kansas City, and other major metropolitan areas across the United States. A major part of the BioDemocracy anti-GE campaign has been (and will continue to be) to pressure large food corporations, the "Frankenfoods Fifteen," to ban genetically engineered ingredients from their products. In July, 2000 we will help organize anti-GE protests and press events in two dozen states. (2) Save Organic Standards Campaign--Our ongoing campaign to prevent the USDA from degrading organic standards and facilitating an "unfriendly takeover" of the organic industry by industrial agribusiness and biotech interests. We are continuing to distribute literature to natural food stores and coops as part of this SOS Campaign. On March 8, 2000, the USDA announced a second set of proposed federal regulations on organic standards, which this time--unlike in 1998--have basically met the demands of the organic community. Remaining vigilant however, we joined our allies in the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and organized and catalyzed a massive response by 40,000 organic consumers, farmers, and workers in the organic industry to the proposed organic rules--telling the USDA not only to not back down on the proposed rules, but to strengthen them further. The comment period on the USDA's proposed organic regulations ended June 12, 2000. According to the USDA they expect to publish final regulations on organic foods sometime near the first of next year (2001) in the Federal Register. Upon publication the final rules will come into force approximately 12 months later. If the final rules do not meet the expectations of the OCA and the organic community once they are published, we'll have to either sue the USDA in Federal Court or join the organic community and come up with our own label and standards. In the meantime we recommend that consumers stay tuned to our website <www.purefood.org> and our newsletter, BioDemocracy News, for further developments. (3) Food Safety and Irradiation Campaign--Our ongoing campaign to educate and mobilize the public to oppose the dangerous practices of industrial agriculture--including food irradiation, antibiotics in animal feed, animal cannibalism, and toxic sludge. In December, 1999, USDA approved irradiation for fresh meat; these regulations went into effect in February, 2000. Irradiated meat and poultry sold at retail must be labeled, but institutional food services (schools, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes) continue to be able to serve non-packaged irradiated foods with no labeling or notification. Meanwhile, the meat/poultry/food processing trade associations continue to pressure FDA and USDA to allow irradiation for more foods, and to remove all current labeling requirements. As we did in 1999, we will continue to mobilize a national petition and letter-writing campaign to oppose these moves by the government, the nuclear industry, and large agribusiness corporations to force a dangerous technology on the public and to prevent consumers from knowing whether their food has been irradiated or not. (4) Food Agenda 2000. We are carrying out a national petition, activist identification, public education, and mobilization campaign to identify 5000 or more people in each Congressional District who agree with our program to transform American agriculture: (1) Global moratorium on all GE foods and crops; (2) Begin the phase-out of the most dangerous practices of industrial agriculture (toxic pesticides, antibiotics in animal feed, toxic sludge, irradiation, animal cannibalism, hormones, steroids etc.); and (3) Convert at least 30% of US agriculture to organic by the year 2010. We are utilizing the data base from the Food Agenda 2000 effort to build local coalitions, to organize local actions, and to recruit OCA members and volunteers. We are also generating citizen comments in support of a legal petition filed on March 21, 2000 by the Center for Food Safety, the OCA, and 50 other groups to pull all genetically engineered crops and foods off the market and subject them to rigorous safety-testing.