Whole Foods Under Fire for Chinese "Organics"

Oh shucks! (4.00 / 4)

This is in the article attached to the vid. It's a comment from somebody who works at Whole Foods:

. . .a broccoli grower in China must be visited and certified to the USDA organic standards by a certifying agent that is approved and supervised by the USDA. If that broccoli is processed in a packaging plant, that plant must also be visited and certified by a certifying agent, who verifies that the handling and ingredients of the product comply with the standard.

This is total bullsh*t because the 'certifying agent' is a private company! As I said before, that private company can be setup up by some big outfit like Whole Foods and can basically approve whatever they want because the USDA isn't inspecting imported food.

Thursday, I posted the video to my Facebook page and my sister wrote:

Remembering what happened with the toy industry, it's disturbing to think of what the government's China Green Food Developement might let through as organic. And we don't have the machinery to test everything that comes in. DDT is still being used in China (supposed to be phased out by year 2014). Scary stuff!

So DDT is still legal in China? Anyway, I found an article on China Green Food Development on Wikipedia and this is what they said:

The China Green Food Development Center abbreviated CGFDC) is the first agency in the People's Republic of China to oversee organic food standards. The Center was established in November 1992, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture of the People's Republic of China, and is headquartered in Beijing.

The CGFDC oversees two Green Food Standards: A (which allows some use of synthetic agricultural chemicals) and AA (which is more stringent, allowing less use of such chemicals, and is consequently less popular with agricultural producers). Both standards focus on the end product rather than the process, and do not generally monitor actual use of agricultural chemicals, preferring instead to test the products themselves for chemical residues.

Total sham. The USDA should be certifying the China Green Food Development Center. Since it is obviously not up to USDA organic standards by any measure, they shouldn't allow ANY food imports from China to be certified USDA.

By the way, there's an English-language version of the China Green Food website.

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by: Crider @ Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 20:48:33 PM UTC

Yea nothing from any overseas country can really be organic (0.00 / 0)

In the 80's nothing could really be organic if it came from out-of-state, in the 90's any thing from Mexico, Central & South America was suspect, today it's China, India and the Ukraine.

Do you know that that many US and EU companies have staff in these countries to oversee their organic operations?  Did you know that most buyers test product from overseas before it leave the country for pesticide residues, heavy metals and bacteria?

Do you know that this testing cost about $1,000.00 per container imported organic products?  None of these steps are required by law, organic companies do this to reassure their customers that the products from overseas are clean and safe.  This on top of the thousands of dollars in organic certification cost.

The organic certification rules for any product intended for US consumption must meet USDA organic standards.  Product intend for the EU must meet EU standards.  Exactly who do you not trust?

Cornucopia is very good at yelling BOOGIE MAN! BOOGIE MAN! but more often than not they get their facts wrong.  

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by: OrganicGeorge @ Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 16:50:21 PM UTC