The Shadows of Consumption by Peter Dauvergne

Author:Peter Dauvergne [SPi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780262042468
Publisher: MIT Press

Defining “Organic” and “Grass-Fed” Beef

Under its2002 National Organic Program, the USDA defines the term “organic” with more exacting standards than the term “natural.” Accredited agents inspect farms and certify producers, handlers, and processors as “organic.” To qualify as 100 percent organic beef, the cattle must not receive growth hormones, antibiotics, or other prohibited medications. A sick animal treated with antibiotics loses its organic status (although vaccinations are fine). Producing organic beef cannot involve “most conventional” pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or genetic modification. The feed must also be certified as organic—thus the cattle can eat grains like corn, for example, but this corn must come from organic farms.

The USDA’s National Organic Program allows for three other uses of “organic” besides 100 percent organic. Retailers may label a product “organic” when it’s made with at least 95 percent organic ingredients. They may use the phrase “made with organic ingredients” when the product contains at least 70 percent organic ingredients and no sulfites. And, finally, for a product made with less than 70 percent organic ingredients, retailers may use the term “organic” when listing ingredients. Only products that are “100 percent organic” or “organic” are allowed, however, to display the USDA “organic” seal. The rules for organic meat, along with higher prices, have kept the market small in the United States: the Organic Trade Association estimates that organic meat accounts for only 0.22 percent of total meat sales.5

Members of the American Grassfed Association have been trying for years to get the USDA to develop standards and procedures to certify grass-fed beef along the lines of the organic label. Many of these members see this as a higher (and better) standard than organic beef because grazing cattle on open pastures is more natural and appropriate than confined feedlots heaped with organic corn. In 2006, the USDA did propose a voluntary standard for the term “grass-fed,” which would have required a diet of mother’s milk and 99 percent grass, legumes, and forage. This would have still allowed ranchers to confine animals in feedlots so long as they fed them “grass”—defined as including hay, rice bran, and almond hulls. It would have allowed ranchers to use hormones and antibiotics, too. The reasoning, explained the chief of the standardization branch of the USDA, was to avoid diluting “the meaning of ‘grass-fed,” and instead use separate standards for determining the extent of confinement as well as the use of hormones and antibiotics. The proposed standard for “grass-fed” also appeared to create a loophole that would allow farmers to classify “immature corn silage” as “forage.”

The Grassfed Association angrily opposed this definition of “grass-fed.” Because most people think of “grass-fed” as “cattle grazing on a pasture, not in a feedlot,” many ranchers in the association saw such a standard as misleading. Most members oppose “grass feeding” in feedlots except in emergencies; and most also feel grass-fed cattle should remain free from hormones and antibiotics. Some members saw this USDA proposal more as a “logo” “for big companies” than a standard for small farmers trying to manage land sustainably.

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