ASSURING STANDARDS FOR ORGANIC FOODS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 28, 1992                   TAG: 9201280482
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: KATHERINE T. DiMATTEO
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
ASSURING STANDARDS FOR ORGANIC FOODS
ALMOST EVERY point made by Marilynn Larkin ("Must U.S. go on an organic feeding frenzy?", Commentary page, Jan. 6) is false or distorted.
First, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is not going to spend millions of dollars deciding what "organic foods" are. In the current federal budget there is only $120,000 allocated to fund the National Organic Standards Board. It is expected that the budget for this advisory board in fiscal 1993 will not exceed $500,000.
The board will be set up this year, and the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 has an implementation date of Oct. 1, 1993. It is expected that fees from inspections or registrations will pay for the advisory board and USDA employees in the future.
The purpose of the board is not to answer the question: Are organic foods safer, or more nutritious, than other foods we eat? Rather, the board will be verifying for the consumer that food labeled "organic" has been produced according to particular standards. Those consumers who want organic food should have a guarantee that the product they purchase is exactly what they expect.
This does not differ greatly from the other USDA and Food and Drug Administration departments that protect all of us from misleading or false labeling on on food products, and which inspect food for our protection. In fact, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA checks the food safety of "ordinary supermarket fare" every day.
The guidelines and standards for organic foods are not in such disarray as Ms. Larkin implies. There are basic tenets of organic-food production that all those in the industry agree to. Differences do exist throughout the country because there are regional, geographic needs that demand different responses.
The Organic Foods Production Act was written to create a uniform, minimum set of standards for organic-food production. Again, this is not unusual for the government of the United States. We have federal definitions and minimum standards for meat, dairy and almost every other food product.
Ms. Larkin seems particularly sensitive about the safety issue. She implies that "organic" advocates are denigrating the quality and safety of the food produced and processed in the United States.
Those in organic-food production are not only motivated by food-safety and health issues. Environmental protection and land stewardship are our goals. It is no secret that agriculture is the major non-point polluter of water in the United States.
We also are losing 3 billion tons of our topsoil from cropland each year due to current agricultural production methods. The government will have to spend millions of dollars to clean up the damage to our environment and soil caused by food production.
I wish I had the opportunity to take Ms. Larkin on a tour of organic farms and to markets that sell organic food. I think she would be very surprised at the modern methods used in production, the consistency among organic-food production methods, the high quality in appearance and the variety of organic-food products available.
Let's keep an open mind. Multiple methods of food production can exist at the same time and provide a broad variety of choices to consumers. All major surveys show that consumers want more food grown with fewer or no chemicals. And numerous historical examples indicate that when an industry fails to respond to what the consumer wants, it's the industry, not the consumer or individual producer, that suffers.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB