Thank you to the thousands of Organic Consumers Association members
who have been participating in our Coming Clean campaign to get organic
retailers to clean up their health & beauty care aisles. We’ve been
trying to clean the shelves of cosmetics and personal care products that
claim to be organic but aren’t certified to USDA standards. Many of
these mislabeled organic body care products (including popular brands
such as Avalon, Nature’s Gate, Jason’s, and Giovanni’s) contain few (or
in some cases no) organic ingredients and are routinely laced with
petroleum-based and problematic chemical ingredients.

This week, after receiving 6,000 letters from OCA members, the
National Cooperative Grocers Association alerted their 134 retail coops
that, as of June 2011, they expect all “organic” claims on body care
products to comply with USDA National Organic Program standards for
products that are “USDA Organic” and “Made With Organic Ingredients,”
and NSF/ANSI 305 standards for products that “Contain Organic
Ingredients.”

NCGA’s organic cosmetics integrity policy is essentially the same as
the one announced by Whole Foods Market earlier this summer.

Please visit OCA’s Coming Clean Campaign page for related articles and more information on organic cosmetics and bodycare products.