Reflections on the Organic Way

An interview with Kathleen A. Merrigan, Ph.D., Tufts University

By Julie Larson Bricher


As this first anniversary issue of Organic Processing Magazine hits the streets, it is also the anniversary of another milestone for the organic industry. On Oct. 21, 2004, we mark the second-year implementation date of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) standards for agricultural products, which standardized the definition of “organic” and mandated consistent labeling of these products across the nation. The final organic standards were developed with extensive industry and government input and thousands of public comments during the decade following the passage of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA).

Among the leading voices in the development of the national organic standards was Kathleen Merrigan, who, from 1987 to 1992, served as senior science and technology advisor to the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee. In this role, she was the staff author of the OFPA, which mandated national organic standards and a program of federal accreditation—a role that has earned her the moniker “midwife” of the OFPA. In 1995, while working as a senior analyst at the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, Merrigan was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to a five-year term as an environmental representative on the National Organic Standards Board tasked by Congress to determine allowable production materials and standards for the emerging NOP.

In 1997, the USDA published its first proposed organic rule that was successfully denounced by organic advocates across the country. Merrigan, working on the steering committee of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, helped lead the fight that generated an unprecedented 275,603 comment letters to USDA. In 1999, President Clinton appointed Merrigan as administrator of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), a 10,000-person, billion-dollar agency with diverse responsibilities. Chief among these was publication of a new proposed organic rule and final rule, which Merrigan oversaw until her political term expired in January 2001.

In recognition of her integral role in the development of the NOP, Merrigan received the Organic Trade Association (OTA) 2000 Leadership Award, which OTA executive director Katherine DiMatteo noted was reflective of Merrigan’s many achievements in furthering the goals of organic agriculture. “The proposed rule for the National Organic Program became a reality [in 2000] because of Kathleen Merrigan’s ability to lead, build a productive team, and articulate a vision for implementing the Organic Foods Production Act. Not only did she deliver a totally revamped regulation, but the resulting regulation reflected the principles, philosophies and standards held dear by the organic industry.” DiMatteo added that during Merrigan’s tenure as AMS administrator, there was “visible progress toward the integration of organic agriculture in existing programs, such as research and education, marketing orders and promotion, and crop insurance, within USDA.”

Currently an assistant professor and Director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston, MA, Merrigan continues to lead efforts that support progress in organic research, funding and policymaking. 

Merrigan spent some time with Organic Processing Magazine to reflect on the state of the organic industry at the NOP two-year mark and to give voice to some of the challenges ahead.

OP: In your opinion, Dr. Merrigan, what are the most significant developments or initiatives in the organic industry since the USDA began implementing the NOP standards two years ago?

Merrigan: We’ve certainly seen more players come into organic because of federal government involvement. The assurance of federal oversight has generated interest among more traditional agricultural players, though it is really consumer demand that has thrust them into the oganic market. But this surge of new entrants is secondary to the most significant development. The formalized definition of organic and federal approval has created opportunities to garner additional government assistance in non-NOP areas, such as organic initiatives in research, crop insurance, disaster assistance and traditional conservation programs, to name a few. Now, organic is a validated, USDA-recognized constituent group for USDA services, and so people in the halls of Congress, in USDA and even in other federal regulatory departments like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are unable to dismiss organic as they had previously done.

We have economists working on it at the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) trying to quantify what’s going on in the market. We have questions about organic agriculture as part of the agricultural census. We have new monies available for organic research. It’s permeating all of government. From where I sit, this is a triumph because I’ve never felt that our farmers—be they organic or in the broader sustainable agriculture camp—have received their fair share of government resources and now the tide is changing.

OP: What are the biggest challenges the organic industry faces in the next few years, and why? Do you have suggestions about ways in which the industry will be able to meet these challenges?

Merrigan: We still have a lot of rule-making challenges as it relates to organic standards. Translating principles into practical standards is a difficult and heart wrenching process. I also think that there is uneven application of the NOP requirements, and certainly there are areas where we need to elaborate on the current standards. For example, here at Tufts University, my colleague Willie Lockeretz and I are just about to begin a two-year process in elaborating the issues surrounding animal welfare in the organic standards. While covered in the current regulations, animal welfare requirements are somewhat vague and perhaps don’t take fully into account some of the scientific expertise that exists in Europe.

I predict more involvement by the courts in the future. We have benefited from a largely legal-dispute-free environment; in other words, the organic sector hasn’t had this court case and that court case pending by this company and that farmer and so forth. This may shift over the next decade, and it won’t just be Congress or USDA setting policy but de facto court case decisions that will have a major impact on organic policy. I am not happy about what my crystal ball says on this, but perhaps it is inevitable and a sign of the maturation of the industry.

International trade policy is also going to be a tough challenge. Many of us carry battle scars from the 15 years or so of trying to come up with a consensus on U.S. national standards. Now, we have to bring that whole process to an international forum. And while IFOAM certainly has many U.S.-based members and there are many U.S. players in Codex Alimentarius, there still are a lot of trade disputes looming. Even when I was AMS administrator, I saw the beginnings of the trade challenge. Prior to the NOP being fully in play, we were already getting visits by France, Japan and other economic traders that have a lot of interest in judging our standards as good or bad. While people in the industry understand that there are a lot of motivations for those judgments, it will be a real energy and resource drain to try to facilitate trade of organic products between countries.

Another big challenge will be coming to some sort of peace about organic and whether it is related to size and structure. There is now this “big” organic and “little” organic differentiation that we see in the press a lot, the implication being that “big” organic is corporate and therefore bad, and “little” organic is socially just and good. Neither one of those portrayals is necessarily accurate; you can certainly find examples to the contrary in each category. But coming to some sort of peace about what constitutes “organic” is important. The people who brought the organic program to the national scene really were the small farmer, non-government organization (NGO) activist types, but perhaps the biggest economic beneficiaries now are the people who had nothing to do with shepherding the NOP into place.

Some of the original midwives of the NOP feel that we lost an opportunity early on in the construction of the legislation to embed social standards, such as fair trade in the organic standards. I have some regrets about that, too, but the question is, can you do anything about that now or do you need a secondary label? Declarations that the national organic standards aren’t good or have been co-opted because the big companies are in the market have generated a finger-pointing situation that I am uncomfortable with. I look at it as having standards that achieve more land in ecologically sound production, which was our overarching purpose from the beginning. However, we did lose some of the agenda as we compromised in ways to achieve success in the NOP and I think people are revisiting that. I know IFOAM standards do have some social criteria and that people are organizing to try to implement certain social criteria in the U.S. standards. I think that is going to be a challenging debate.

Finally, I’m spending time visiting farms these days and it is apparent that there are farmers who follow all the rules for organic, but who are not embracing the spirit of organic. For example, shifting from a conventional pest control and synthetic fertilizer to an organic approved pesticide and compost does not alone make one organic. It’s just input substitution. Trying to get farms to truly diversify, rotate crops and embrace the organic vision is a challenge and requires firm certifers with a USDA that backs them up.

OP: In your keynote speech last winter at the First World Congress on Organic Food at Michigan State University, you called for a comprehensive set of credible, peer-reviewed scientific studies to highlight the organic “difference.” Can you discuss further why such studies need to be conducted and how the industry can help advance such scientific research?

Merrigan: Without exception, studies of consumer behavior show that the number one reason people are buying organic is for their own personal health—it tastes better, it’s more nutritious, it’s safer—as opposed to purchasing organic because they want to do something that helps the environment (although this latter reason is creeping up the list). We’ve known this for some years but because organic wasn’t formally defined by the U.S. government it was hard to address the safety and nutrition aspects in research and at that time, the research departments of USDA weren’t funding in that area.

We just had the first request for proposals from USDA for money that was authorized in the 2002 Farm Bill for organic research. Now, that money really wasn’t put aside for food safety or nutrition research but I expect money will shift in this direction soon. As goes USDA, hopefully we’ll also see the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) begin funding research on questions about the relationship between organic and safety and nutrition. Consumers instinctively think that organic food is better for them and I can certainly understand some of their reasoning, but definitively we don’t know and I think it’s merely a lack of investment in research.

So, what can the organic processing industry do? Well, the industry can do what all industries do—they can fund research. If I am in the almond industry, I am contributing to research on almonds. If I am in the cranberry industry, I am contributing to research on cranberries. Well, if I am in the organic industry, I should be contributing to the research on organic. That’s what other industries do. On the one hand, we have an agenda to get our fair share from the federal government because while the $5 million recently allocated by USDA for organic research is the biggest funding the organic industry has ever received, it is a paucity of money when compared to funding given to other agricultural sectors. At same time, the organic industry needs to look at other industries to see what they do in terms of advancing their own agendas through research partnerships.

OP: Is there any critical NOP compliance area on which organic processors should focus attention in the near-term?

Merrigan: What processors need to do as a collective is to think about the question of synthetic inputs. The National List, of course, allows for several processing aids, or additives, in organic food products. We know from consumer research, however, that consumers are largely unaware that organic products may include synthetic additives and I think if the question was put to them, they
wouldn’t really like what they hear.

In light of this, I suggest that the organic processing industry assess how it can help provide information to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) about appropriate exceptions to the no-synthetic rule and consider how we can reduce that list so that only the most essential processing aids are being used, consistent with consumer expectation of organic products. In other words, if I am a company executive, instead of expending time and resources to figure out the different ways I can get processing aids on the National List,
I might spend my time better figuring out whether I can say, “Hey, I have five fewer processing inputs than anyone else making this product.” That really should be the objective of the organic products manufacturer.

When we wrote the law back in the dark ages of 1990—pre-marriage, pre-kids, pre-house and mortgage—we had a pretty good sense of what inputs were used at the farming end of organic and the corresponding synthetic exceptions to the no-synthetics rule. At the time, we really didn’t know what those inputs would be in processing and so we wrote the law in a way that was vague and that later USDA interpreted to allow an application process in which synthetics could be included on the National List in the same manner that farm inputs would be. When I was involved in the development of the OFPA in 1990, I always thought we would come up with a universe of processing aids or synthetic inputs for which there would be a generally national consensus on those that were absolutely
necessary.

What I feel now is that we haven’t tried to do the culling necessary to figure out what is most essential. Certainly, there are a lot of factors that come into play as new products come into line, as processors try to identify sources of organic inputs and overcome the lag time that can exist between when you need it and when it becomes commercially available. I really do understand the nuances of this but as a general proposition, I would say that we need a lot more policy thinking about processing inputs. I’m sure that some of the organic processing companies have their own consumer research that shows that there’s a disconnect between what consumers think about organic processed food versus what the reality is in terms of the inputs used.

Julie Larson Bricher is Editorial Director of Organic Processing Magazine. She can be reached at julie@organicprocessing.com.