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Pathway :: Home  Environmental Wal-Mart Charged with Selling Nonorganic Food as Organic
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Wal-Mart Charged with Selling Nonorganic Food as Organic |
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Contributed by Cornucopia Institute
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Monday, 20 November 2006 |
Contributed by Daryl Hepting
Cornucopia, WI: The Cornucopia Institute, the nation's most aggressive
organic farming watchdog, has filed a formal legal a complaint with the
USDA asking them to investigate allegations of illegal "organic" food
distribution by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Cornucopia has documented cases
of nonorganic food products being sold as organic in Wal-Mart's
grocery departments.
"We first noticed that Wal-Mart was using
in-store signage to misidentify conventional, nonorganic food as organic
in their upscale-market test store in Plano, Texas," said Mark Kastel
of The Cornucopia Institute. Subsequently, Cornucopia staff visited a number of other Wal-Mart stores in the Midwest and documented similar improprieties in both produce and dairy sections.
Cornucopia notified Wal-Mart's CEO Lee Scott in a letter on September
13, 2006 alerting the company to the problem and asking that it
address and correct the situation on an immediate basis. But the same
product misrepresentations were again observed weeks later, throughout
October, at separate Wal-Mart stores in other states.
"This is disturbing and a serious problem," Kastel said. "Organic farmers adopt and follow a rigorous range of management practices, with audit trails, to ensure that the food they sell to processors and
retailers is organic and produced in accordance with federal organic
regulations. Consumers, who are paying premium prices in the
marketplace for organic food, deserve to get what they are paying
for."
Earlier this year, Wal-Mart announced a sweeping organic
foods initiative and declared that they would greatly increase the
number of organic offerings for sale in their stores-at dramatically
lower prices than the competition. The move by the giant retailer has been under close scrutiny from members of the organic community seeking to assess what impact Wal-Mart's decision will have on organic food and farming concerns.
A number of other
organic food retailers throughout the country, including Whole Foods
Markets and many of the nations member-owned grocery cooperatives,
have gone to the effort to become certified organic in terms of the
handling of their products and have invested heavily in staff training
to help them understand organic food production and sale
concerns.
"Our management and our employees know what organic
means," said Lindy Bannister, General Manager at The Wedge Cooperative
in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "If Wal-Mart intends to get into organics, they can't be allowed to misidentify 'natural' foods as organic to unsuspecting consumers." The Wedge, the largest single store member-owned food cooperative in the nation, was one of the first retailers to go through the USDA organic certification process.
"One can question whether Wal-Mart has the management and staff expertise necessary to fully understand organics and the marketing requirements essential to selling organic food," observed Kastel. "At
this point, it seems they are attracted by the profits generated from
the booming organic food sector but are not fully invested in organic
integrity. Given their size, market power, and market clout, this is
very troubling."
Cornucopia's complaint asks the USDA to fully
investigate the allegations of organic food misrepresentation. The farm
policy organization has indicated that they will share their
evidence, including photographs and notes, with the agency's
investigators. Fines of up to $10,000 per violation for proven
incidents of organic food misrepresentation are provided for in
federal organic regulations.
This past September, The
Cornucopia Institute also accused Wal-Mart of cheapening the value of
the organic label by sourcing products from industrial-scale
factory-farms and Third World countries, such as
China.
The Institute released a white paper, Wal-Mart Rolls Out
Organic Products-Market Expansion or Market Delusion?, that made the argument that Wal-Mart is poised to drive down the price of organic food in the marketplace by inventing a "new" organic-food from corporate agribusiness, factory-farms, and cheap imports of
questionable quality.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 27 November 2006 )
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