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Re: Organic Foods Production Act Implementation



IFOAM standards are no longer in existence. At the big IFOAM meeting in
Denmark, the certifier group, who can belong and have voting rights simply
by just paying a fee, and wbo have therefore easily increased their ranks,
VOTED AGAINST STANDARDS. They outvoted the rest of us, who have worked for
decades to get standards finally decided upon.

These upstarts wiped out standards and voted instead for just  GUIDELINES.
That means nothing, and allows for money under the table from growers to
these certifiers who showed by their vote the kind of "integrity"  they
have ! ! 

Dr. Thos Harding and I were really boiling angry. All the years or working
on standards down the drain in 5 minutes.

So if IFOAM no longer has standards, who else could keep them alive?

The reason the good, real certification groups want to be able to have
their own, special, private certifying is to get away from the hazards
that the "GUIDELINES" will mean.  People will find out that the USDA
"standards" are worthless, and will feel helpless to know what food is
safe. 

So that is why the really organic growers are trying to find a way to have
private certifying--ignoring the weak USDA stuff.  They are not trying to
make a $ killing, but just wanting some way to continue offering really
safe food.

But the wicked people are already trying to prevent that, even before the
nogood USDA rules are finalized. There is a ruling about to be made that
it will be illegal to even offer a private certifying by the really
organic famers.

Look at the people who oppose the weak "standards" USDA is going to have.
These opposers are people we have known for decades to be honest and
upright, like Kirschenmann, for example.

It's all a dirty trick, and I am thoroughly disgusted. We will have to
depend on personal, private certainties in our  own minds as to who is
really organic. Now is the time to keep you eyes and ears open, because
after the USDA gets thru destroying validity, you will have no way to know
who is honest.  Learn now!!!

In a way, I almost wish I were a grower. With absolute certainty everyone
knows I, at least, am 100% for organic, always have been and always will
be.

Anyone who has followed my years and years of talk, writing, TV, radio,
books (and especially my recent Organic Method Primer UPDATE, will
certainly have no doubts.

B. Rateaver