Clamping down on organic fraud

KANSAS CITY — Obtaining proper documentation of imported ingredients and testing the purity of domestic ingredients are two ways to prevent organic fraud, which varies by ingredient.

“It’s dependent on the origin of the particular ingredient and its susceptibility for fraud risk,” said Carey Allen, director of food claims, NSF and Quality Assurance International (QAI), an NSF company based in San Diego. “If it’s in very short supply, then it’s very naturally hard to come by.”

Scrutiny of imported organic ingredients increased in March 2024 when compliance went into effect for the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) rule from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. The SOE requires buyers, sellers, brokers and traders to be certified. Before the rule, it was not as difficult to divert a commodity from a country subject to US tariffs to a different country not subject to US tariffs, Allen said.

“So, the actual change of hands and the quantity of materials that changed hands is much more transparent with the certification of the brokers and the traders,” Allen said. “Whereas as in the past, it might have been a little bit murkier picture to see specifically what was happening during those intermediate steps.”

The SOE especially impacts imported organic spices.

“There is more oversight in looking at these spices that are coming from areas of concern: India, Southeast Asia,” said Allison McLeod, technical scheme lead for QAI, an organic certifier recognized by the USDA.

More oversight also pertains to high-value specialty crops such as hemp, aloe vera, chia, flax and medicinal mushrooms, Allen said.

Domestically, organic fraud may occur in honey when it is adulterated with other kinds of syrup, Allen said. True Source Honey, LLC, Mount Royal, NJ, offers a True Source Certified seal that certifies the honey is not adulterated or illegally sourced. In another example, conventional soybeans may be blended with organic soybeans. McLeod said testing for pesticide residue may reveal whether conventional ingredients have been blended with the organic ingredients.

Increased government funding for domestic organic ingredients may boost supply, thus reducing costs and incentives for fraud. In the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, which was the most recent farm bill, support for organic and specialty crops like fruits, vegetables and nuts represented 0.1% of total funding, which was noted in the Make America Healthy Again Commission report issued May 22 by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“The MAHA Commission report alone will have little impact on organic,” said Matthew Dillon, co-chief executive officer of the Organic Trade Association, Washington. “It gives brief mention to a lack of funding for organic, but otherwise MAHA continues to miss that organic is the voluntary solution that requires no new regulations to provide food aligned with their objectives — specifically, food with no antibiotics or growth hormones, significant reduction in toxic synthetic pesticides, and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. With this in mind, we encourage the MAHA Commission and its advocates to support making organic more accessible to more households.”

Dillon pointed to the USDA’s Organic Integrity Database showing 8.4 million organic acres in the United States with 91.9% reporting. Extrapolating the remaining 8.1%, there are roughly 9.16 million organic-certified acres in the United States, Dillon said.

“OTA is continuing to advocate for government investments that address the challenges US farmers face in getting their products to market,” he said. “In the last year alone, the US has experienced shortages of organic dairy products, in addition to an ongoing reliance on foreign imports of organic beef, infant formula, and crops such as corn and soy. A five-year farm bill investment could build scale and appropriate processing infrastructure to help onshore these crops and deliver value to family farms and rural communities.”

US sales of organic certified products in 2024 increased by 5.2% to $71.6 billion, compared with 2.5% for the overall marketplace, according to the Organic Trade Association.